
ADYEHTORES 

TROPICS 


LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




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A. in T. 


"They Plunged Together.’’— Page 75 






A dventures 

IN THE TROPICS. 


FREDERICK GERSTACKER. 


TRANSLATED BY 

FELIX L. OSWALD. 

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W. L. ALLISON CO.; 

NEW YORK. 






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V 


t 1208 


Copyright, 1898, 


W. L. ALLISON CO. 



nd COF7, 
1898 . 


TWO COPIES RECEIVED. 


CONTENTS. 

1. — A HUNTER’S PARADISE 7 

2. — ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS 73 

3. — THE CONVENT TREASURE 149 


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A HUNTER’S PARADISE. 


BY 

FREDERICK GERSTAECHER, 

Author of '"'’Pred Wildman's Adventures'' '^Cruises in a Summer /S'ea,” 
^’The Convent Treasure.," etc.., etc. 


TRANSLATED BY 

FEUX L. OSWALD. 







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I 




A HUJSTER’S PARADISE. 


CHAPTEK I. 

In the harbor hotel of an Australian seaport town 
I made the acquaintance of a railway surveyor, a 
Captain Yandivere, who had tried his luck in every 
climate from Sweden to southern Africa, and had 
never forgotten to take his hunting rifle along. 

“ You have been surveying in five different conti- 
nents, haven’t you?” I asked him; “what would 
you say is nowadays the best hunting-ground in the 
world ?” 

“That depends on what you would call having a 
good time,” he said ; “ if you wish to sit in a sleigh 
and have a hundred bush-beaters drive rabbits and 
park-deer right where you want them, you ought to 
go to a Kussian game preserve and make friends 
with the owner ; but if you are not afraid of fatigue 
and would like to see an everlasting variety of wild 
animals where Nature boards them, I would advise 
you to come along with me to the island of Java, 
next month ; I was there once before, and had so 
much fun that I made up my mind to divide with 
somebody the next time.” 


6 


A HUNTER'S PARADISE. 


“ Are they going to build a new railway there 

“ I can^t come to terms with them about that,” 
said the captain ; “ but in the meantime they want 
me to survey a government wagon road across the 
mountains, and that’s worth taking along, I reckon, 
if I count in all the chances for sport.” 

“ I would go if I could get a job to pay my ex- 
penses,” I replied, for I had always hankered after 
an opportunity to visit one of those mountainous 
wonderlands of the Indian Ocean. 

“ You can do better than that if you know French 
or Hollandish enough to keep an account-book,” 
said the captain ; “ and if you are a pretty good shot, 
besides, I think I can get you a job as a fore-ganger, 
as they call it — an overseer of the advance gang, 
who has to keep the woodcutters to their work and 
pump the bush panthers full of lead. But they 
would expect you to keep the muster-roll of the 
men in your charge. Would you like to try that, 
this summer ?” 

“ Any time that would suit you,” I replied ; and 
four weeks after the captain introduced me to Myn- 
heer van Kempen, a prosperous planter of Bangor- 
den, Java, and contractor in chief for a considerable 
force of native road-makers. 

“I wish you would keep an eye on these two 
boys, too, while you are about it,” said the planter, 
when we had agreed on the terms of my engage- 
ment; “this is Frank, my own youngster, and this 
little chuckle-head ” — pointing to a juvenile darkey 
— “he has to go along to keep him out of mischief; 


A HUNTER'S PARADISE, 


7 


his name is Lucas, I suspect, but they always call 
him Luxy.” 

Our woodcutters had been given a day’s time to 
grind their jungle-knives, and as there wasn’t a 
cloud on the sky that afternoon, Frankie insisted on 
taking me up in the hills and give me a chance for 
a shot at a flock of wild peacocks he had seen on a 
chase after a runaway horse in the morning. "We 
found the place where they had been scratching in 
the underbrush, and picked up a tail-feather or two, 
but the birds were gone, and after an hour’s search 
we applied to a native farmer who was hoeing the 
weeds of his yam field near by. 

“ I think I heard them a little while ago,” said 
the Javanese, and at once dropped his hoe when we 
offered him a groten — about three cents — to pilot 
us through the tree tangle. 

“ They are too shy to let you come in stone’s throw 
range,” he remarked ; “ they are a worse nuisance 
than squirrels where you have a grain-field, and we 
keep boys on the watch to pelt them every time 
they come, but their tricks are not measured for 
gunpowder.” 

“ Stop fooling. Loo,” said Frank, when our black 
youngster began to have dancing-fits in the dry 
leaves ; “ you make more noise than a troop of young 
horses.” 

“ Yes, keep quiet a moment,” said the Javanese, 
“ listen ! D’ye hear that cackling ? That’s a pea- 
hen with chicks, if I ain’t mistaken — ^yes, there she 
goes. Why don’t you shoot, sahib 


8 


A HUNTER'S PARADISE, 


“It’s bad luck shooting hen-birds,” explained 
Frank, well aware that the native would not appre- 
ciate our real reason ; “ but just look at that ; let’s 
try and catch one of those little squealers.” 

At least a dozen pea-chicks were toddling through 
the weeds ahead of us, screeching in a fright, while 
their mother kept flopping from tree to tree, and sud- 
denly turned to the left with the evident intention 
to rejoin her brood in a roundabout way. 

“ I’ll catch ’em for you !” cried Luxy, and crushing 
down his felt hat, started in pursuit of a specially 
noisy chick that seemed to have a knack of getting 
tangled in every brier patch it tried to cross. At 
the flrst rush the chicken appeared to have lost its 
wits altogether, and ran about in a circle screeching 
worse than before ; but then, suddenly gathering 
itself up, contrived to take wing, and between fly- 
ing and running, led Luxy a chase of a quarter of a 
mile before he Anally gave up the pursuit in 
disgust. 

“ ISTow what did you do,” said Frank when Loo 
returned, grumbling ; “ you ran that poor thing 
where its mother can never And it.” 

“ I don’t care,” growled Luxy, “ them critters 
have got no sense, nohow ; I wasn’t going to kill 
it ; there’s a nice coop in our stable, and I’d have 
put it in and given it two square meals every day, 
but those things don’t know what’s good for them.” 

“Go easy,” said the Javanese, “ there’s a clearing 
ahead, and that’s where we may find the herd at 
this time of the day.” 


A HUNTER* 8 PARADISE. 


9 


“Yes; 1 can hear one call,” whispered Frank. 
“ Wait ” — then running ahead, beckoned to me from 
a copse of sarca thorns — “here’s one now, and it’s a 
cock, and — listen! there must be a big troop of 
them a bit further on.” 

A solitary peacock was strutting along the edge 
of the woods, picking berries or insects from a row 
of low bushes, but suddenly stopped, turned his long 
neck, and before I could take aim, spread his wings 
and sailed away in the direction of a wooded ridge 
on the other side of the valley. But just then we 
caught sight of the main herd. They were feeding 
in a patch of alang-alang grass, not more than two 
hundred steps from our hiding-place, but so evi- 
dently unconscious of danger that I ventured to 
stalk them to the end of our thorn hedge. There I 
knelt down, and resting my gun in the fork of a 
bush, rolled over the next cock in a little furrow, 
where he flopped about for a few seconds, and 
then lay still, while the rest took wing in all 
directions. 

“We got him!” yelled Luxy, rushing out of his 
ambush, though a part of the flock came directly 
toward our hedge, and some of them not more than 
sixty feet above our heads. 

“ There, take my shotgun,” cried Franky ; “ look, 
what a monster of a big cock there, that second 
one !” 

I blazed away, and in a whirl of dropping 
feathers, the cock kept on a dozen yards further, 
then plunged, shot ahead again and finally came 


10 


A HUNTER* 8 PARADISE, 


tumbling down into a jungly ravine, about a quarter 
of a mile below our ridge. 

“Well get him, too,’’ cried Frank; “ I can tell 
the place by that tree with a dry top ; he dropped 
right alongside of that, a little bit further uphill.” 

“We got this one all right, anyhow,” chuckled 
Luxy, dragging up the first cock ; “ you hit him 
right through the neck.” 

The wild peacock of Java and Ceylon resembles 
his domesticated relative in all but the color of its 
neck and breast, which is dark green, rather than 
blue, and in some varieties grayish-green — the exact 
hue most apt to hide them in the sun-parched 
thickets of their favorite haunts. In the glare of a 
tropical sun that color gleams with a metallic 
luster, and a flock of the full-grown birds, sweeping 
across an open glade, is a sight never to be for- 
gotten, and rivaled in beauty only by the many- 
colored macaws or giant parrots of the South 
American coast forests. 

“ Now let’s try for number two,” said Franky ; 
“ we’ll find him sure, if we find that tall tree.” 

But the thickets in that ravine were almost im- 
penetrable, and it took us nearly half an hour before 
we reached a pebbly brook at the bottom of the 
glen. Frankie’s tree stood a little higher up on 
the opposite slope, but we strained our eyes in 
vain ; the underbrush was so tangled that it seemed 
a puzzle how any living creature except a serpent 
or a weasel could force its way through. 

“ Look up yonder, what would you call that ?” 


A HUNTER 'S PARADISE. 


11 


said Luxy pointing to a dark object on a midway 
branch of the next tree ; “ that cannot be a bird 
can it ?” 

“ Maybe it’s a nest or a tangle of tree-moss,” 
suggested Frankie. 

“ No, no, I saw it move,” said the little darkey ; 

just watch it close — there, didn’t you see that ?” 

I raised my rifle, but tried in vain to get a clear 
aim through the maze of intervening branches, and 
at last fired by guess at the center of the prob- 
lematic lump. 

A rustle of leaves followed the crack of the shot, 
and for a moment it looked as if the branches 
around the lump were going to tear asunder, then 
everything was still, and suddenly a good-sized 
animal of some sort or other came tumbling out 
and plumped crashing on a dry prong and down into 
the matted thicket on the other side of the tree. 

“I’ll get him,” cried Luxy, but the Javanese 
farmer’s hand came down on his shoulder. 

“ Hold on, boy,” he said, “ don’t, boy, that’s no 
peacock — that thing kill you.” 

“ What was it, you think ?” I asked. 

“ Mafjan Icetjil^^ said the Javanese. “ Make this 
boy behave, sahib, or it tear him to shreds.” 

“ What does he mean, I wonder ?” 

“ A little tiger is as near as I can understand 
him,” said Frankie ; “ he can’t mean a tiger kitten, 
for they never climb trees in this country ; it must 
be something else — perhaps a tree cat ; it looked 
speckled when it came in sight for a moment,” 


12 


A HUNTERS S PARADISE. 


“ Look ! it left a tuft of its hair on that prong,” 
said Luxy, “ I’ll get that anyhow,” and before we 
could stop him he had swarmed up a bush-rope and 
set it a-swaying till he had swung himself in reach 
of the prong. 

‘‘ There, Boss, that’s all there was,” said he, hand- 
ing me a bunch of grayish-yellow hair with black 
tips ; “ I tried to get a peep at the owner of this, 
when I was up there, but the branches are so mixed 
up you can’t see a yard ahead.” 

‘‘I^ever mind, let’s keep this anyhow,” said 
Frankie, “ I’ll bet you ten groten Clarence can tell 
us now what that was.” 

“ Who’s Clarence ?” 

“ Oh ! you’ll see him this evening, it’s Clarence 
Cotter ; his father is a professor and mining inspec- 
tor, or something like that, and there’s nothing 
about beasts or birds that man don’t know. He 
used to take Clarence along on all his mountain 
trips, but he’s in Europe now, and Mrs. Cotter is so 
scary she won’t let Clarence stir hardly unless there 
is somebody along. It’s all right now, though, with 
you and Mr. Yandivere to help if anything should 
happen. Shall we try for that second peacock a 
little further down this branch? Maybe we can 
cross there on those big stones.” 

“Ho, let’s give it up,” I said; “after dinner to- 
morrow, if they give us those two hours’ rest, we 
can take a couple of Coolies down here and let 
them try their luck with jungle-knives.” 

We passed a kampong^ or native villagej on our 


A HUNTER 'S PARADISE. 


13 


way home and heard an uproar of yelping dogs in a 
thicket below their banana patches. “ Oh, nothing 
but hahi utang ” (wood pigs or wild hogs), said one 
of the villagers, who did not seem to mind the noise 
the least bit. 

“AVon’t you help us kill a few for your supper?’’ 
I asked. The native hesitated. The Javanese hill- 
tribes are nearly all Mohammedans, who would 
sooner starve for a week than touch a piece of pork, 
though the jungle pigs often leave the thickets in 
moonlight and play havoc in their yam fields. 

“ All right, me help,” said a Chinaman, from a 
little colony of immigrants at the end of the vil- 
lage ; and two Javanese then agreed to go along, 
too. “ Babi-mayong” (hog-eaters), they nickname 
the Chinamen, but did not want to miss the chance 
for a little fun at the expense of the obnoxious four- 
footers. 

“ Come this way,” said the Chinaman, who seemed 
to be familiar with the haunts of the hahis, and 
probably had tried his hand at trapping them in 
their trails ; “ let’s go down to that pond,” said he, 
while the two villagers yelled to their dogs and 
succeeded in doubling the din in the thicket. 

The pig-bait had hardly begun when our China- 
man came near being upset by a sow that suddenly 
broke cover and came tearing down the slope like 
a black bristled hurricane. Five seconds after a 
little Javanese cur shot out of the thicket, just as 
Frankie blazed away at the retreating sow. JSTow 
and then the native dogs are trained for hunting 


14 


A HUNTER'S PARADISE. 


purposes, but this special pup had perhaps never 
heard the voice of a shotgun before, and flew back 
in affright till he reached a clump of ground thorns, 
where he faced about, barking and howling by 
turns. “Wait, I’ll start him,” laughed Luxy, and 
snatching up a red neckerchief that the Chinaman 
had dropped in struggling to his feet, he made a 
dash at the bush, yelling at the top of his voice, and 
the cur fairly flew through the thicket, his howls 
suddenly changed to squeaks of mortal terror. 

“ ITow, watch out !” cried Frank ; “ they’re com- 
ing this way, sure !” 

The crashing in the thicket above us resembled 
the noise of stampeding cattle, and suddenly the 
troop burst in view — some ten or twelve full-grown 
porkers, with a lot of sucking-pigs that squealed 
worse than the old ones, and at sight of the dogs 
turned several somersaults in their efforts to keep 
up with the advance guard. 

The dogs did collar one of the little potbellies, 
and at the sound of its shrill screams several of the 
vanguard leaders turned back, and I took the chance 
for a close-range shot at a flerce-looking boar. The 
troop then redoubled its speed, but the boar stood 
still, till I almost thought I had overshot my mark, 
when he began to walk in a circle and, suddenly 
darting off sideways, pitched in the sand headfore- 
most, dead as a log. The rifle ball had struck him 
between the ears and broken his skull in two places. 
Frankie pulled down on a half-grown specimen, in 
compliance with the excited gestures of our Chinese 


A HUNTERS 8 PARADISE. 


15 


friend, and this time with better success : the hog 
rolled over and was pinned down by the dogs before 
it could get on its legs again. 

A strange-looking animal, about the size of a 
badger, brought up the rear of the stampede, but 
dashed out of sight before we had time to reload 
our guns. 

The Javanese halis are a little smaller and much 
uglier than the common European wild hogs ; their 
snouts seem bent the wrong way, giving their 
heads almost the appearance of alligator skulls. 
Their legs are long in proportion to the total weight, 
which rarely exceeds three hundred pounds. 


16 


A HUNTER* 8 PARADISE, 


CHAPTEK 11. 

Swarms of Tcalongs^ or fruit-eating bats, were on 
the wing before we got back to Bangorden, and at 
a distance of nearly two English miles the where- 
abouts of a fruit-orchard could be inferred by the 
clouds of the winged gluttons, circling about like 
pigeons around a dove-cot. ‘‘Flying foxes,” the 
Hollanders call them, and large specimens really can 
bite worse than a rat ; but they never eat meat and 
confine their ravages to vegetable products — fruit, 
grapes and half -ripe corn. In the rainy season they 
rarely leave their hiding-places before dark ; but in 
harvest time their greed gets the better of their 
prudence, and they often sally in swarms before 
twilight, giving the colonists a chance to riddle them 
with crow-shot till the ground of the mangosteen 
groves is literally covered with a mass of the dead 
or crippled harpies. To exterminate them altogether 
seems almost impossible; but the Dutch colonists 
have made them a little less ruinous by organizing 
“ fox clubs ” — rival gangs of bat-shooters who start 
out at twilight, and take along all the natives they 
can coax or hire. As they approach the feeding- 
grounds of their game they send out scouts and post 
their sharpshooters, many of them armed with old- 


A PAHADISK 


17 


fashioned Dutch shotguns that will hold a pint 
of bird-shot and kick like canal mules, unless the 
hunter protects his shoulder with a pad as thick as 
a pin-cushion. 

“ Bhunderyak” (monkey-birds) ! yells the boy 
who has spied the marauders from his lookout perch 
in a tree-top, and the villagers rush ahead ; the 
kalongs set up a twitter of alarm, but still linger 
near their feast, till suddenly a volley of stones, as 
big as eggs, comes hurtling through the branches. 
In a moment the air is black with circling giant 
bats ; the flocks join in a large swarm, and as soon 
as they are gathered so close that not a pellet can 
miss the big shotguns belch forth their death-war- 
rants from all sides. Fifty to a hundred kalongs 
are thus often bagged in one evening, and there are 
settlements where they have become so scarce that 
their depredations do not amount to five dollars a 
year. But on some of the native plantations of the 
interior they are so numerous that the farmers can 
protect their orchards only by means of large nets 
and the furious beating of kettle-drums. 

Clarence thinks that must have been a tiger- 
cat,” said Frankie, when he entered the supper-room 
with a tall lad, wearing blue spectacles and looking 
a good deal like a German grammar scholar, though 
as sunburned as a gypsy ; ‘‘ he says they almost pass 
their lives on the trees, or only come down to get a 
drink of water in extra dry weather.” 

“ Yes, we have five kinds of wild cats in this 
country, besides the tigers and leopards,” said the 


18 


A HUNTER* S PARADISE. 


young naturalist ; the smallest is not much larger 
than a squirrel, and the largest is big enough to kill 
deer and elk.” 

‘‘This must be a hard country for a chicken 
farmer,” I observed ; “ one kind of wild cat is more 
than enough for the, backwoodsmen in the United 
States.” 

“ Yes, but cats are not as troublesome as our bush 
martens,” said Clarence ; “ there are three or four 
kinds of those too, and they keep foraging night and 
day; in any northern country they would destroy 
every living thing ; but we have such an immense 
number of birds and rats that there are more than 
enough to reach around.” 

“How old are you, Clarence?” asked Captain 
Yandivere, who had come down from the hill-camp 
to get his rifle. 

“ Fourteen, or fourteen and a half, to be exact,” 
said the young zoologist. 

“ Do you hear that ? Won’t he make times hot 
for the monkeys and things when he gets a little 
older ?” laughed the captain ; “ but don’t try to chop 
down any more rutah trees this trip.” 

“ Why — did he get hurt ?” 

“ I should say so ! Don’t you see those blue eye- 
glasses, or did you suppose he was shortsighted? 
Hot a bit ; he can tell a marten from a squirrel at 
long rifle range. But two months ago he was cut- 
ting his way through a thicket, and tackled the 
wrong tree — chopped into a kind of wood as full of 
poison as a rum-barrel, and the sap squirted out and 


A EUNTER'S PARADISE. 


19 


nearly burned his face off. He will be all right 
again in a week or so, and then Heaven help the 
apes ; he shoots them and stuffs them, and sends 
live ones to Batavia, where they have several pet- 
dealers that buy everything from a leopard to a 
lizard.” 

“ 1 wish that eyeglass fellow had stayed where 
he came from,” growled Luxy, when we had gath- 
ered on the porch after supper, and Clarence had 
gone up to his room to arrange his collections ; “ he 
said I was sprung from monkeys, and he could 
prove it by the shape of my skull. He will get his 
own skull broken if my daddy gets after him.” 

“ That’s right, Luxy,” laughed the captain ; “don’t 
let them slander you ; there isn’t a monkey in the 
woods that can beat you eating wild grapes, is 
there ?” 

“Hor pulling faces, either,” said Clarence; “just 
look at him sitting there and pouting like a black 
owl !” 

There was a heavy fog on the river the next 
morning, but we started soon after dawn, because 
the afternoons often get so hot that you have to 
give your workmen a double noonday rest. When 
the mist began to clear away the paroquets in the 
crests of the raya-palms saluted the morning with 
sudden screams, swarms of crows rose from their 
roosts in the hill forests, two and two large green 
parrots came flying across the sky, and from a 
wooded glen below our road came the piercing 
scream of a jungle pheasant.^ 


20 


A HUNTERS 8 PARADISE. 


“Is that the kind of bird our barnyard cocks 
spring from ?” I asked our naturalist. 

“No; you do not find them so near the coast,” 
said young Cotter; “they crow almost exactly like 
our roosters, and are quite as pretty : dark-brown, 
with red and yellow streaks. In some parts of Java 
they breed in the foothills, but they will not stay 
near a farmyard, I understand ; perhaps it aggra- 
vates them to hear another fellow crow where they 
cannot rush in and clean him out. They are great 
fighters, but monstrous shy of gunpowder. Halloo ! 
Some of your coolies got ahead of us this morning.” 

The sound of the woodcutter’s ax rang out all 
along the ridge of the hills, and the horses that had 
accompanied us from the plantation were hitched in 
teams to assist in the removal of the brush piles. 

“I’m going down this hollow to look at some 
traps I set yesterday afternoon,” said Clarence. 
“ When your men cut down any hollow trees please 
see if we cannot come across a nest of hornbills ; a 
bird dealer in Batavia has been trying to get a few 
live ones these last two years, and I hear them 
screech in the woods around here every once in a 
while.” 

About half our woodcutters had brought noth- 
ing but their jungle-knives, a sort of heavy cutlass 
without a hand-guard. It looks like trying to cut 
down a tree with a sword, but practice makes them 
almost as handy as an ax, and for clearing a trail 
through tangled creepers or a bamboo brake they 
are as effective as a sharp scythe in a barley-field. 


A HUNTER'S PARADISE. 


21 


Luxy had been set to work loading brushwood, 
to keep him out of mischief, but every now and 
then availed himself of a recess to climb a tree or 
fling stones at the lizards that were scampering 
about the open glades. 

“ Say, come here and see what the coolies found 
in this Cecropia tree,” said Frank, when we had 
been at work about three hours ; ‘‘ look at these lit- 
tle rascals,” said he, lifting a shawl from a tin pail 
with three blinking imps, looking like kittens with 
baby faces and squirrel tails. 

“ They must be young devils,” said Luxy, who 
had skipped off while the coolies were unloading 
the cart ; “ just look how that biggest one grins at 
you !” 

“They have hands with regular finger-nails,” 
said Frank ; “ a pity Clarence isn’t here now — wait, 
ril see if I can’t find him.” 

It was near noon when the two friends returned 
from the wooded glen where Clarence had been fill- 
ing his hunting bags with zoological sundries. 

“ Guess what,” said Frank, holding up the covered 
pail. 

“ Hornbills ?” 

“ Ho — no horns about them.” 

“Maybe they are not grown yet,” suggested 
Luxy. 

“Why, they are lemurs — young specter apes,” 
said Clarence at the first peep ; “owl monkeys, you 
might call them, because they sleep in daytime and 
cry like whimpy-owls ; but they get very lively in 
bright moonlight and make great pets.” 


22 


A HTTNTBR'S PARADISE. 


“What! have you to wait for the full moon 
before you can feed them asked Frank. 

“ No, they learn to wake up in time for meals,” 
laughed Clarence, “ only they eat their breakfast in 
the evening, unless you keep them in a dark room. 
I had one that followed me all over the house like 
a pet puppy, when the sun was down and before it 
got quite dark.” 

After dinner we hired two of our coolies for an 
hour of extra work and took a stroll down the pea- 
cock ravine. “ There’s that tree with the dead top 
branches,” said Frankie ; “ but maybe our tiger cat 
got well again and skipped out by this time.” 

“ You’ll find him all right, I expect,” said Clar- 
ence; “they don’t fall out of a tree like that unless 
they are shot all to pieces. If they have the least 
bit of life left they use it to hold on to their tree. 
Did you ever hear that story about a South 
American jaguar and the peccaries ? He had been 
in wait for them on a low branch of a tree, and 
when they passed underneath he reached down and 
struck his claws into one of their sucking pigs, but 
before he could pull it up the old boars made a rush 
for him and ripped his throat with their tusks. 
There he hung, with one claw holding on to the 
tree and the other dangling down limp and his head 
almost cut off his body, for the peccaries had ripped 
him into shreds before they left. And that’s the 
way the hunters found him the next week — dead 
and torn, but still hanging to the tree where he had 
struck in just one of his paws. A cat with all her 


A HUNTEW8 PAUADISE. 


23 


paws in working order has a grip like a grappling 
hook, unless you catch her on a slick rock.” 

“ Here’s the place where we gave it up,” said 
Frankie ; ‘‘ let’s see if we have better luck this 
time.” 

The coolies went to work, and in about ten 
minutes had cut their way to the foot of the dead 
top tree. 

“ Frankie was half right, after all,” said Clarence ; 
‘‘ here’s the head and ribs of your tiger cat, but the 
other half of him is gone ; something or other got 
the start of us — those wretched wild hogs, very 
likely — yes, I thought so, that’s what your Javanese 
guide meant when he warned you ; this chap would 
have paid you home if you had found him with an 
inch of his life left. Can I have this head, 
doctor ?” 

“ Why, certainly ; I’m sorry there isn’t more of 
it. Are you making a collection for a public 
museum?” I inquired. 

“ I wish I could get a job of that sort,” said the 
young naturalist ; “ it’s just my own collection, and 
once in awhile I make a few dollars selling live 
pets to the dealers in Batavia. They gave me fifteen 
dollars for a young leopard last summer, and then 
sold it again for fifty.” 

“ Wonder if we can’t find that peacock, too,” 
said Frankie. 

Our coolies cut their trail about forty steps 
further, and then rested at the foot of another tree, 
while the boys explored the thicket in all direc- 
tions. 


A BUNTEWS PARADISE. 


U 


“ Good-luck, we found something, anyhow,” said 
Clarence, on his return from a crawl on all fours 
into the maze of the jungle. “ Couldn’t these chaps 
get a prize in any beauty show ?” — holding up his 
cap with two little pot-bellied monsters, covered 
with yellowish down and gaping like catfish every 
time they opened their beaks. 

“ You catch the devil next,” laughed Frankie. 

“They are oriyas^ a sort of nighthawk,” ex 
plained Clarence; “ no wonder the natives believe 
they build no nest at all, and are just born old 
where all other spooks come from. I found these 
beauties in a crack of a fallen tree, with jungle as 
thick as a wall all round; if it hadn’t been for our 
coolies that nest would never liave been found for 
a hundred years. But talk about things being as 
‘ homely as a hedgehog ’ — a hog is a fairy compared 
with these little monsters — all eyes and gape and 
claws.” 

“ You missed some fun,” said the captain when 
we returned to the hill camp ; “ two of our coolies 
had a fight with a Chinaman, but they made friends 
when they heard a crashing in the bushes and I 
told them a leopard was coming this way.” 

Dinner recess was not over yet, and just before 
we were going to summon our men for roll-call we 
heard that rustling in the jungle again. “ Hold on, 
a minute,” said the captain ; “ maybe we get a 
glimpse of whatever it is.” 

A sound like the gallop of heavy four-footers 
came from the lower slope of the valley, and look- 


A HUNTER'S PARADISE. 


25 


ing down an open glade we saw two jambook deer 
dart across at breakneck speed and plunge into a 
m3^rtle-tree thicket on our left. 

“ There’s something chasing them,” said Clarence, 
and in the next moment a pack of wolfish animals 
dashed into the glade, and one of our coolie cooks 
put his two hands to his mouth and gave a whoop 
that waked the echoes of the hills all around. 

“ Quick — hand me that rifle,” said the captain ; 
and going down on one knee, took a steady aim at 
one of the timber-wolves that had stopped in the 
middle of the glade, eying us in surprise. At the 
crack of the shot we could see the next wolf dodge 
as if a stone had grazed his head. The marksman 
had aimed an inch too high ; and the brute advanced 
a step, and bristling with rage, snarled at us just 
like a savage dog. 

The captain was just reloading his rifle when 
Frankie banged off his shotgun, and, to our surprise, 
one of his leaden telegrams did reach its address in 
spite of the unreasonable distance, and Mr. Wolf 
limped off yowling, followed by his frightened com- 
rades, and vanished in the jungle. 

“ What did you do that for, Frank ?” said Clar- 
ence; “the captain was just about done loading 
when you spoiled his fun.” 

“ I shouldn’t growl,” laughed the captain ; “ I 
missed and he hit, somehow or other. You struck 
him in the foot, the way you made him limp.” 

“ What were they, anyhow ?” I asked ; “ they 
looked exactly like Mexican shepherd dogs.” 


36 


A HUNTER'S PARADISE. 


“We call them timber- wolves,” said the captain, 
“ but that’s just as foolish a name as skj-foxes for 
bats. They are dogs more than anything else — 
wild dogs like those they have in Australia and 
Sumatra.” 

“ They will tear up anything from a half-grown 
rabbit to a wild hog,” said Clarence. 

“ Yes,” said the captain ; “ let me tell you what I 
saw near Khydenberg harbor one day. I was out 
with Surveyor Ellard, trying to find a ford across 
the river, and when he joined me near the beach he 
told me he had come across an old battlefield — a 
place where the ground was covered with bleached 
skeletons. We went back to take a look at that, 
and I could tell at first glance those bones couldn’t 
be from human beings unless they were all giants. 
But what they could be did puzzle me considerably, 
till a planter of that neighborhood told us they 
were tortoise skeletons — the remains of big sea tur- 
tles that come up the river in spring to bury their 
eggs. They come nearly the same time every year, 
he said, and on their way from the beach to the 
egg-grounds the poor devils are tackled by wild 
dogs that turn them over and tear them to pieces, 
leaving nothing but the shells and bones. The 
shells are afterward carried off by the natives, and 
the skeletons remain till the sun has bleached them 
as white as ivory.” 


A IlUmmi ’JS FAMADISK 


27 


CHAPTER III. 

On our way home that evening we passed a tree 
where a flock of steel-blue Iris-crows seemed to have 
assembled for a screeching concert. They were sit- 
ting around their nests, cawing and screaming at 
one another, and at intervals of a few minutes rose 
in a whirling swarm, all screeching in chorus, till 
they got tired and settled down again for an ex- 
change of private arguments. 

“ Look ! Master Luxy came near getting killed on 
that tree one day,’’ said Frank ; “ he clambered up 
to rob one of the nests, but the crows made it too 
hot for him — flew right at his face, he said ; and 
just as he was sliding down he stirred up a swarm 
of big hornets, and had to let everything go and 
plump down happy-go-lucky to save his life, and 
those hornets chased him nearly a quarter of a mile, 
as he went downhill, a whoop at every jump.” 

“ Yes, I know them,” laughed the captain, tree 
hornets nearly as long as your finger, and almost 
exactly the same color as those crows. Poor 
Luxy thought things were getting too blue up there 
altogether, I suppose.” 

“ I came back the next day to set that old tree 
afire,” growled Luxy, “ but I couldn’t make the 
blamed thing burn.” 


28 


A HUNTERS S PARADISE. 


“ Hold on a minute, I believe I see that hornets’ 
nest he was talking about,” said Frankie; ‘‘step this 
way ; now look right below that big dark branch 
on the left-hand side: don’t you see something 
dangling there like a bag of gray tissue paper ?” 

“ Yes, I see it,” said the captain ; “ why, that 
thing is as big as a four-gallon jug ; there must be 
music in the air if you get that stirred.” 

“ Oh, captain, do try and put a rifle-ball through 
the center of that,” said Clarence ; “ they cannot 
possibly trace us from that distance, but you might 
hit it from here, couldn’t you ?” 

“I suppose so,” grinned the captain ; “ but stand 
back, then ; I want to be ready to run if they come 
this way.” 

A shower of gray shreds flew out of the airy wig- 
wam, and in the next moment we could actually 
hear the buzzing of the enraged proprietors, and all 
of us ran about fifty yards further downhill before 
we ventured to stop and look back. 

“Hurrah!” yelled Luxy; “look at that, ain’t 
they giving those old crows something to screech 
for !” 

Seeing no other imaginable cause for their dis- 
aster, the hornets had evidently made up their 
minds that their next neighbors, the Iris-birds, had 
broken the truce, for the whole crow congregation 
suddenly rose with screams wholly different from 
their wonted evening concert, and even in midair 
individual birds could be seen plunging and flapping 
to dodge the savage avengers. 


A HUNTER'S PARADISE. 


29 


Luxy was seized with another of his dancing fits, 
and Clarence laughed so much that he dropped his 
curiosity pouch, and had to go down on his knees to 
recapture several runaway bugs and lizards. 

‘‘ I don’t blame Luxy for getting out of that in a 
hurry,” said Clarence ; “ they would kill a person if 
they could catch him in that tree, right now; don’t 
you think so, captain ?” 

“ Not any doubt of that,” said Captain Yandivere; 
“ they have been known to kill horses that were 
hitched up and couldn’t get away in time. Yes, 
hornets and bees belong to the few kinds of insects 
that can kill a human being ; some of the largest 
wood-ants might manage it, too, if they got a good 
chance, but I have always had my doubts about 
centipedes and tarantulas. I was myself bitten by 
tarantulas twice ,but that didn’t put me on the sick- 
list for more than a day or two.” 

We had several neighbors for supper-guests, and 
one of them confirmed Captain Yandivere’s state- 
ments about the reckless rapacity of the bush- 
dogs. They will not often tackle a single steer,” 
he said, “ but if you yoke two of them together and 
they happen to stray out in the woods, they are 
generally torn to pieces before night. The wolves 
really do more damage than the tigers, because they 
hunt night and day, and besides they help each 
other, and it takes a clever steer to fight a dozen 
brutes charging him from all sides, and all at the 
same time.” 

‘‘ Do they ever kill dogs ?” I asked. 


A HUNTER ’8 PARADISE. 


•60 

“IS'ot if they can help it/’ said the farmer, ‘‘and 
our hounds do not like to fool with them either, 
unless you set them on, and that’s generally the end 
of your pup. The wolves keep running and snarl- 
ing, and I have known them to stop and stand still 
with all their hair up, to give their cousin fair 
warning, but if he must have a light they suddenly 
all face about and tear your dog inside out in one 
minute. But they never eat dog-meat, they just 
leave him where he dropped, for a hint to the next 
comer, and that makes me think they can be no 
true wolves.” 

“Of course not,” said the doctor; “ they are just 
wild hounds ; probably sprung from some breed of 
hunting-dogs the Portuguese left here when they 
lost their colony.” 

“Yes, and you can tame them easier than you 
can any real wild beast,” said another neighbor. 
“Three years ago my boys were hunting up on 
S tarn berg Kidge and came across a place where a 
litter of wild pups were feeding off a dead yearling, 
and they watched them for awhile chasing each 
other round and playing just exactly like young 
dogs. They made up their minds to catch a pair 
alive if they could, and sneaked up behind the rocks 
to a hundred steps, or less ; but all of a sudden the 
pups caught sight of them and ran off yelping 
precisely like scared poodles. One of my bovs is a 
pretty good runner and raced one of the little 
whelps down, and when it saw there was no help it 
rolled over on its back and put up its paws to beg 


A HUNTER 'S PARADISE. 


31 


for its life. It never tried to bite, either, when he 
took hold of it, and he tied it up in a cotton hand- 
kerchief with nothing but its head sticking out, and 
the poor little thing kept as quiet as a pet pigeon 
in a basket. The rest got away into a cleft, where 
my youngsters couldn’t follow ; and it was no use 
trying to smoke them out, for those limestone caves 
reach way back in the mountain and have more out- 
lets than one. When they started for home they 
believe the old bitch must have got on their track 
'and followed them nearly two miles. They heard 
something coming down the mountain through the 
bushes four or five times, but they couldn’t get a 
glimpse of it; when they stopped it stopped, too, 
and when they made a rush for it, it slunk back in. 
the thicket. Maybe the mother of that pup had seen 
them bundle it up and came to help in case they 
should get tired of it and put it down ; but when 
she saw it was booked for a trip to the settlement, 
she probably gave it up for lost. And, would you 
believe, that one week after they brought that 
creature home the poor little whelp tried to watch 
our house for us ? We had made him a nest in a 
candle-box behind the bureau and gave him all the 
milk and meat we could spare, and whenever a 
stranger came in Mister Eips, as we called him, 
hopped out and made a rush for the door, yowling 
and barking, and then crawled under the bureau 
when he saw he had made a mistake. Our boys 
could handle him all they wanted, and after awhile 
he learned to follow them out in the woods and 


32 


A HUNTER'S PARADISE. 


back. He seemed quite contented, but we noticed 
several times when he heard the baying of his wild 
relatives up in the ridge he put his head on one side 
and listened with a peculiar expression about his 
face. If you would talk to him at such times he 
would sneak under the lounge and look scared, as if 
you had caught him in some rascality ; and I am 
almost sure the little rascal was hatching a plan to 
take a sneak some moonlight night, and forget to 
come back.” 

‘‘ Could he get along with other dogs ?” asked the 
captain. 

“ Why, yes, from the very first week,” said the 
farmer ; ‘‘ I have seen them bark at pet foxes and 
kill pet tiger-cats, but they never seemed to see 
anything wrong about Eips; they either did not 
mind him at all or played with him as they would 
with any other puppy. If it hadn’t been for the 
shape of his ears you would have taken him for a 
young hound ; but the way he barked made people 
stop and stare at him ; he would start off like any 
other dog, and then set up a queer kind of a yelping 
howl, as if somebody had struck him or he was on 
the track of big game. I have heard hounds yelp 
on a leopard track that way, and my idea is that 
Kips got scared at his own impudence after trying 
to run a stranger out, and then fell a yelping at the 
idea of what might happen next. If we had just 
raised him with other pups he would have got used 
to the settlement after all ; but about a year after 
we found him Dr. Siebert, from Heerenfeld, took a 


A HUNTER'S PARADISE. 


33 


fancy to him, and I let him take him along, because 
I thought they would give him a good home. It 
was really a curiosity to see him race around on a 
public promenade and roll in the grass with high- 
toned pups, from Batavia ; but the doctor’s wife did 
not like him at all, and ran him out of sight several 
times for bothering her chickens. She must have 
beaten him, too, I think, and when the doctor 
brought him back I could tell it the first day that 
they had spoiled him for a pet. If you just looked 
at him hard, or he taw my girl take up a broom, he 
would run off yowling and disappear if he could 
find a hiding-place. We kept him in the stable after 
that [and tried never to come near him unless we 
had his dinner ready ; but my boys once in awhile 
took him out hunting, and one day came back with- 
out him. He had strayed out of sight on Barekop 
Mountain, and they looked for him and called near 
an hour, but he was gone for good that time.’’ 

“ Or perhaps for bad,” laughed our landlord. ‘‘ I 
shouldn’t wonder if he didn’t join a pack of his old 
friends, and let them know where you keep your 
chickens.” 

‘‘ They don’t need anybody to tell them,” said the 
farmer; “I do believe they know every chicken- 
roost on this island, and every pig-pen and nanny- 
goat stable. The fear of raising a neighborhood 
row is all that makes them a little careful ; but if 
you let your pets stray out in the woods you might 
as well drop them in a shark-pool. The wolves 
prowl around everywhere, and it seems they can 


34 


A HUNTER'S PARADISE. 


tell at first glance if a stray animal has a fighting 
chance against them or not. If a deer has been 
wounded and limps just the least bit they can tell 
that too, and never stop chasing till they have run 
him down.” 

Just before dark a Chinese hunter came up from 
the village and offered our landlord a large bundle 
of Francolin partridges at ten groten a dozen, or 
about three cents apiece. 

“Wonder where he shot them?” I asked, after a 
vain attempt to make the pigtail-man answer that 
question. 

“He caught them in a bush-net, I suspect,” said 
the captain ; “ you won’t catch these fellows wasting 
a cent on gunpowder. They do not care for the 
sport of it, either ; but where there is a market for 
game they contrive to supply the demand. What 
they cannot sell they eat themselves ; they waste 
nothing, and their fishermen work on the same 
plan ; they lower and raise a big dip-net, with narrow 
meshes, that won’t let a minnow slip through.” 

We had a thunder-shower that night, but the 
morning sun rose on a bright sky, and the breeze, 
sweeping through the drenched foliage of the coast 
forests, had cooled the air surprisingly. Mynheer 
van Kempen’s little terrier stood shivering at the 
door, and was glad to get admission to the warm 
kitchen. 

While we were waiting on the porch for the 
roads to get a little dryer Luxy came down the 
gallery stairs, slamming a slouchy old coat against 


A HUNTER '8 PARADISE. 


35 


the banisters, as if he were trying to knock the 
sleeves off. 

“Look here, Mr. What’s-yer-name,” he turned 
upon Clarence Cotter, “ mought I ask what you had 
in that box you put down on the gallery last night?” 

“ A box ? Oh, I remember,” said the enterpris- 
ing naturalist; “ you mean that cigar-box with blue 
twine arouud it ; I had some ants in there — a 
curious variety of red horse-ants that I had never 
seen before.” 

“ I do wish to goodness you had never seen them 
at all,” growled Luxy. “ You put them down right 
underneath my old coat, and when I wanted to use 
it this morning I might as well have jumped in a 
nest of yellow-jackets ; they had got out in the 
night and had their teeth into me in a hundred dif- 
ferent places before I could help myself.” 

“ Too bad,” laughed Clarence, “ but there were 
no teeth about it. Buddy ; ants bite by means of 
their mandibles.” 

“Mandevils? that don’t plaster my hide,” 
grumbled Luxy, scratching his shoulder ; “ and 
there’s another thing I wanted to ask you: did you 
put a live snake in that lumber-room next to the 
wash-room.” 

“ What ! Did it get out ?” 

“ Out ? I should say so ; it scared the mischief 
out of me when I saw it first, and it took our scrub- 
bing woman ten minutes to chase it out of my bed- 
room and sweep it off the gallery.” 

“ I — I don’t see how it ever got loose,” stammered 


36 


A HUNTER* 8 PARADISE. 


the irrepressible collector; “ I put it in a basket with 
a lid and tied my handkerchief over it ; but there 
^vas no need to get scared; it belonged to the 
coluber species, the harmless first class of the true 
serpents.” 

‘‘ There will be a first-class funeral if I catch that 
thing in my bedroom again,” muttered Luxy. 


A HUNTER'S PARADISE. 


37 


CHAPTER IV. 

Troops of palm-monkeys scampered across the 
sand-road at the foot of our ridge, and we noticed 9 
that they hung back to watch us from the wayside 
bushes and steal out again as soon as we were 
gone. It was the heavy rainfall of the preceding 
night that had driven them from their wonted 
haunts, and they wanted to get warm by basking in 
the sunshine of the open road. 

Two hours later, when our woodcutters had 
advanced nearly to the top of the ridge, we heard 
an uproar of monkey voices from a group of 
Adansonia figs that towered above the woods of the 
eastern slope, where the sun had gradually dried 
the foliage of the highest treetops. 

“Let’s go and see what they are screeching 
about,” said young Cotter, whose passion for horse- 
ants had been moderated by his encounter with the 
sharp-tongued darkey. 

“ They are in trouble of some sort or other,” said 
the captain. “ After you have been about these 
woods a year or two you can understand their 
racket almost like some foreign language. I can 
tell how they call their mates and how they warn 
each other in danger. There’s something after 
those fellows in the figwoods.” 


38 


A HUNTER* 8 PARADISE. 


“ Oh, come here, I can see it now,” said sharp- 
eyed Frank; “ it’s a vulture or an eagle. Step this 
way; you can see it plain, and its shadow, too.” 

A piraya eagle was circling about the top of the 
fig-trees, and frequently hovered, as if about to 
plunge down on its prey, and it was then that the 
chattering of the ape assembly rose to ear-splitting 
screams. 

“ Let’s see how close we can slip up on that mob,” 
said the captain ; ‘‘ there’s underbrush enough to 
hide us from that pirate, anyhow.” 

“ A piraya isn’t even a true eagle,” said young 
Cotter ; “ it’s half buzzard, or what they call a kite 
in Europe.” 

About two dozen gibbon apes were huddled to- 
gether on one of the giant figs, and under the in- 
fluence of the general panic several of their young 
ones seemed inclined to make a break for the open 
woods, but were instantly snatched back by their 
elder relatives. The tree that protected them was 
a mass of thick foliage, and the veterans of the 
troop appeared to know the advantages of their 
present refuge too well to take the risk of a stam- 
pede. In the palm- woods, with their long naked 
stems, they would not have had a ghost of a chance 
against a winged pursuer, and even now their hope 
of survival depended on the possibility of keeping 
themselves screened by constant dodging. 

“ Watch this gap in the top branches,” whispered 
Frankie, when we had reached the foot of the ape 
tree ; “ that buzzard, as Clarence calls it, is passing 


A HUNTER* 8 PARADISE. 


39 


it every once in awhile; please, get your rifle 
ready, captain, and the next time he comes, let’s 
blaze away together.” 

“ There ! you missed that chance,” said Clarence, 
as the shadow of the big bird crossed again ; “wait, 
let me step over this way, where I can watch for him 
coming the next time.” 

“ Maybe he has seen us,” I suggested after we 
had waited nearly five minutes, with all eyes on 
that gap. 

“]N^o, boss, he ain’t gone,” said Luxy, who was 
crouching in the ferns like a relative of the refugees 
in the treetop ; “ he’s somewhere on the other side 
of the tree, but he’s heading this way again. I can 
see those monks a-starting every time they catch 
sight of him.” 

“Watch out!” cried Clarence, and not a second 
too soon. The piraya swept into view again, and 
our three shots went off almost together. 

Down came the eagle, flopping away in a desper- 
ate attempt to make one wing do double work, or 
at least check his fall in time to prevent the worst; 
but he plunged down to within forty feet from the 
ground before he at last clutched a branch and 
dangled, head downward, trying to right himself in 
spite of his crippled condition. 

At the triple crack of our guns Luxy’s relatives 
had vanished, and the plunge of the eagle probably 
had not helped to allay their alarm, but presently 
their keen eyes realized the discomfiture of their 
enemy, and one by one they peeped out of their 


40 


A HUNTER* 8 PARADISE. 


hiding-places and joined in the excited chatter 
which gradually rose to a chorus of exultant 
screams. 

“Don’t stir,” whispered the captain, “we may 
never see such a sight again.” 

Three or four of the long-armed veterans of the 
troop were clambering down, and began to jab the 
dangling kidnaper as if to test the degree of his 
helplessness, and then reached down boldly to pluck 
him — snatching away handfuls of brown feathers 
and scattering them till they came down like flakes 
in a snowstorm. All this time the bird had not 
uttered a single scream. 

“Just look at that,” chuckled Luxy ; “they have 
seen us ; one of them was grinning at me.” 

“ They want to know how the rest of your folks 
is getting along,” suggested Clarence. 

Luxy scowled, but the twinkle in his eyes came 
back with his ready wit. “ That’s a fact,” he said; 
“ one of them asked me to make his brother come 
up there and help them catch snakes.” 

“ He’s got you again, Cotter,” laughed the cap- 
tain. “ Hello, here comes our buzzard !” 

The death-grip of the piraya had at last relaxed, 
and he plunged down through a tangle of leafy 
vines, striking the ground at Captain Yandivere’s 
feet. 

“Ho wonder he had to come,” said Frankie, after 
examining his prize. “One of his wings is nearly shot 
off, and a bullet went clear through him ; but then 
he had no business bothering Luxy’s friends.” 


A HUNTER'S PARADISE, 


41 


“ It doesn’t pay to bother us folks too much,” said 
Luxy, and they teased him no more that day. 

Two of the gibbon-apes had clambered down to 
within ten yards of the ground, and bent over, 
straining their eyes, to watch the fate of their foe. 

“ I don’t blame the Hindoos for calling it a sin to 
kill one of those clever chaps,” said the captain ; 
“just see how they watch us, as if they wanted to 
come down and shake hands, if they were just sure 
we could be trusted ; they are really more than 
half human.” 

“Yes, it’s wrong to hurt them,” said Clarence, 
“ unless you want to see what four hands can do in 
the timber ; it takes a good trotting horse to keep 
up with them if the horse has a level road and they 
have a row of trees not too far apart. I’ve seen 
them swing off and clear about twenty-five feet in 
one jump. And then these gibbons make an honest 
living in the woods and don’t hang about the or- 
chards stealing all day, like those little macaques.” 

We shot several palm-squirrels that afternoon, 
and Clarence caught a night butterfly that meas- 
ured eight inches from tip to tip of its gray wings, 
and looked like a gray woodpecker when we first 
saw it crawl up the trunk of a tree. 

“They would pay five shillings for a curiosity 
like that in London,” said the captain. 

“ Yes, that’s what Dr. Ehyder told us,” said 
Clarence, “ and my father is going to try if he can- 
not find us a market for such game in Holland, too ; 
there are scores of curiosity dealers in Antwerp and 


42 


A HUNTERS S PARADISE. 


Amsterdam; they sell sea-shells and stuffed birds 
and what not. This would be the very country for 
a contract to supply a public museum ; the day but- 
terflies, I think, are the prettiest in the world, 
unless the settlers in Sumatra beat us, where they 
raise Chinese oranges by the hundred acres, and 
the butterflies are swarming about the blossoms in 
clouds as long as daylight lasts.” 

Our Chinese pot-hunter did not return that 
evening, but after supper one of our coolies told us 
that the hog-eaters had gone down in the river- 
jungle to set their tiger-traps.” 

‘‘ They saw tiger tracks all along the sand road 
this morning,” said he, “ and they are going to try 
for prize-money again.” 

“The government pays fifty florins apiece for 
tiger scalps,” explained our landlord, “and that’s 
quite a sum in a country where you can buy a day’s 
rations for a groten. Suppose we put our cook in 
charge of the wood-choppers for a few hours, and 
let’s all go down to-morrow morning to see the 
fun. They are wonderfully clever at setting traps, 
and they may have caught a leopard or a tiger by 
that time.” 

Two of our coolies went down to the river early 
the next morning, and brought us word that the 
Chinese had located a tiger and dug a pitfall, and 
were going to bait it after a plan of their own. 
Yah Sing, our partridgeman, said the messenger, 
wanted us to come down right away, if we w^anted 
to meet him at his cabin and see some rare sport. 


A EUNTEW8 PARADISE, 


43 


We started at once, and reached the Chinaman’s 
cabin just when the owner was fastening his door 
and preparing to return to the jungle. Yah Sing 
carried a bag with two squealing little pigs that 
were to be used as a live bait. His countrymen 
had dug two pitfalls, one of them near a hrant-feld^ 
as the Hollanders call a place where the underbrush 
has been destroyed by a forest fire, and the other in 
the very heart of the wilderness, where a thicket of 
hibiscus bushes afforded us a good hiding-place. 
The pitfall was covered with brushwood so cleverly 
that nobody would have suspected the hidden trap, 
and for greater security the pig was not fastened 
to the brush itself, but to a little sapling .over- 
hanging the center of the pit, for fear that its 
struggles might disarrange the cover. Its noise 
was to attract one of the tigers which trappers 
knew to be lurking in the neighborhood, and it 
needed not much prompting; the swaying of the 
sapling and the tightness of its belly-band irritated 
it so much that it never stopped squealing. 

“Let’s wait here,” said Yah Sing, motioning us 
to a log behind a second brush-pile, that served to 
hide the dirt from the pit. “ If we hear him come 
we move a bit farther back,” he added ; “ but we 
needn’t go far — if he’s hungry he won’t mind who 
is around.” 

But half an hour passed, and no sign yet of the 
expected guest. Was he asleep? 

Our pig did its very best to wake him, but it was 
possible that its voice was drowned by the incessant 


44 


A HUNTER' 8 PARADISE. 


screams of a mob of wanderoo monkeys in the 
neighboring cypress forest. 

‘‘What makes them yell so, I wonder?’’ asked 
Frankie ; “ can’t we stop them, somehow or other ?” 

“ Hush ! Listen ! They are coming nearer,” said 
the planter ; “ I shouldn’t be surprised if they have 
seen something ; there’s a tiger or leopard coming 
this way. Halloo ! I’m sure of it now,” he added 
after awhile ; “ and it’s sneaking along that lagoon 
in that bottom ; yes, that’s a tiger coming to market 
for pork, and the monkeys after him.” 

Yah Sing seemed to have arrived at a similar 
conclusion; for he suddenly rose, and, stooping for 
a parting glance at the lagoon, beckoned us to fol- 
low him to another ambush, about fifty yards 
farther back in the woods. “Watch that fallen 
tree over yonder,” he whispered ; “ here he comes.” 

We noticed the swaying of the branches, but did 
not see the tiger till he leaped upon the root-end of 
the log, and faced about to get rid of his persecu- 
tors. A whole troop of wanderoo monkeys was at 
his heels, and, judging by their impudence, it seemed 
as if some of them had no idea what sort of game 
were pursuing ; they charged him again and 
again, like crows in the wake of a hawk ; they 
could not possibly intend to risk a fight, though 
they were fifty to one — but they wanted to drive 
him away from that neighborhood, and used all 
foul and fair means to accomplish their purpose. 
Some of their youngsters ventured near enough to 
make a grab at his tail; others kept following in the 


A HUNTER '8 PARADISE. 


45 


branches overhead to throw down sticks, and some 
of the old ones, who should have known better, 
capered around him with outrageous yells, as if they 
intended to challenge him to single combat. Their 
boldness might have cost them very dear if it had 
not been for their marvelous agility ; if he failed 
to catch them at the first spring they were sure to 
be a hundred yards off before he could make a 
second one ; a cat might as well have tried to catch 
a pine squirrel. 

On level ground a tiger would soon turn the 
tables on such hunters; but in the woods a four- 
handed animal has the great advantage of its pre- 
hensile fingers that enable it to use the small twigs 
like a rope-ladder, while a cat-like creature can 
climb trees only by striking its claws into the bark 
of the larger branches. Four or five times he turned 
around, and charged them with an angry growl ; 
but they were too quick for him, and yelled in 
chorus as if they were mocking his awkwardness. 
He then tried to waylay them by hiding behind the 
root-tangle of the fallen tree ; but they discovered 
his whereabouts, and the noise became worse than 
before. 

“Isn’t it wonderful to see the nerve of those 
apes,” said the captain; “it’s like playing with cer- 
tain death, for if he should get hold of one of them 
he would tear him into shoestrings just in two rips. 
You wouldn’t suppose that those same wanderoos 
go almost crazy with fear if they see a buzzard, as 
Cotter calls it.” 


46 


A HUNTER'S PARADISE. 


“Yes, it does look strange,” said Clarence; “but 
the reason is that they know a tiger cannot catch 
them and an eagle can; flying is a trick that no 
four-footed or four-handed animal has a chance 
against. But they are dreadfully afraid of snakes, 
too, on account of the suddenness a poison adder 
can shoot out of a hiding-place where no one could 
have been looking for it.” 

But Yah Sing’s tiger at last hit upon a plan to 
make his tormentors a little more careful. He 
started off in a lazy trot, and in a way as if he had 
completely forgotten his pursuers, but the round 
eyes of a cat and its relatives enable them to look 
backward with less than half a turn of their heads, 
and when half a dozen of the little rascals were 
close at his heels, he suddenly turned like a shot 
and made a spring right into the midst of them. 
As he had foreseen, their being so close together 
put them in each other’s way, and one of them was 
this time not quite fast enough, though his headlong 
leap just barely saved his life. But even in mid-air 
the tiger’s paw struck him between head and neck 
and tore off a piece of his scalp like a cap. He 
landed on one of the lower branches, and grasping 
it with his hind feet, he clutched his head with both 
hands and looked as astonished as if lightning had 
struck him from a blue sky. But, feeling the sore 
place, his petulant screams suddenly turned into a 
pitiful howl, and in a moment his relatives were 
all around him, cuddling, petting, and nursing him, 
with indignant grimaces at the bush where the tiger 


A HUNTEWS PARADISE. 


47 


stood watching them with an expression of mali- 
cious glee. 

After a chattering consultation the wanderoos 
retreated with their wounded comrade, and the 
tiger then made straight for the place where Yah 
Sing’s pig still lamented the discomforts of its pre- 
dicament. A bold leap from the stump of our log 
landed him within a few feet of the pit ; there he 
stood, advanced a step or two, and then came to a 
full stop. 

There was something about the appearance of the 
pig that did not altogether please the tiger. He 
put his forefeet on the log and raised his head to 
scrutinize the phenomenon more closely. A pig in 
a tree! Here was something contrary to all his 
previous experience. How did it manage to get up 
there, or who put it there, and for what purpose ? 

The tiger turned his head toward the lagoon, and 
then looked silently in every direction. All was 
quiet : the pig had seen him and stopped squealing ; 
the monkeys were gone ; no sound, near and far, 
save the low croaking of the reed-frogs. 

The tiger stepped back and walked around the 
tree to examine the miracle from the other side. 
There could be no doubt of it ; it was a real pig, 
and alive, too, for suddenly its squeal recommenced, 
and perhaps reminded the tiger of his screeching 
friends in the woods, for again he switched his tail, 
like a cat stealing upon a mouse, and with a sudden 
spring flung himself against the sapling. 

Hothing like trying, he probably thought to him- 


48 


A EUNTEWS PARADISE. 


self, and the weight of his leap actually brought 
down both the pig and the branch it was tied to. 
Down they came, tiger and all ; only a little deeper 
down than he had foreseen, for in the next minute 
the three of them, together with an assortment of 
dry brushwood, landed at the bottom of the pit — 
more than twenty feet perpendicular. 

“ lS[ow, quick !’^ shouted the planter. “ Come on 
if you want to see some tall leaping 

As soon as the tiger saw our heads at the day- 
light end of the pit, he treated us to a display of 
gymnastics that would have done credit to a 
kangaroo. He scraped bushes and pig out of the 
way, and crouching till his chin almost touched his 
feet, he shot up like a rocket, clutching wildly at 
the slippery walls of the pit, and then down again 
for another leap ; but though his highest jumps 
carried him a yard above the top-notch of the best 
human jumper, the top of the pit was still half a 
dozen feet higher, and the walls were as smooth as 
a spade could make them. 

Once or twice it looked, indeed, as if he were 
going to spring directly in our faces ; but before 
long his strength failed and he sat glaring and ex- 
hausted at the bottom of the hole, deaf to our 
shouts and heedless of the little pig that kept trot- 
ting around in a circle, in the hope of finding the 
outlet of this novel pen. 

“ Look down there. Yah Sing,” laughed Frankie ; 
“ that fellow never touched the lunch you brought 
him.” 


A HUNTER 'S PA RADISE. ' 


49 


they never do/’ said the Chinaman; “no 
likee eat in that place.” 

“ He found the price of pork too high to suit 
him,” said the captain ; “ get a couple of stones, one 
of you, and let’s see if we cannot wake him up.” 

Luxy picked up a hatful of clods, and at the 
third attempt hit the pig-stealer square in the face. 

We all started hack, expecting a jump with a 
vengeance, but the tiger merely rubbed his nose, 
and switched his tail once or twice ; as if it tickled 
him to think of the chance for fun if one of those 
jokers should lose his balance and come down to see 
him. 

“ How would it do to try and get that chap out 
alive ?” I asked; “ wouldn’t they buy him in 
Batavia ?” 

“ Yes, but they wouldn’t pay you the expenses 
of such a job,” said Clarence. “ I remember 
what trouble we had with a half-grown leopard, 
and this brute is as big as they grow and in 
the flush of his wickedness. It might take us 
forty men with fork -poles and a hard day’s work 
to get him out alive, and perhaps he might prove 
too live to suit us. Better let’s put him out of his 
misery, and be done.” 

“ Yes, he’s right,” said the captain ; “ it wouldn’t 
do to keep that fellow down there just to torment 
him. What d’ye say. Yah Sing; shall we shoot 
him for you and save you a groten’s worth of gun- 
powder ?” 

The Chinaman nodded his head. “ Yea, you 
shoot,” he said ; “ but me getee bounty.” 


50 


A HUNTER'S PARADISE, 


“ Oh, that’s all right, old man,” laughed the 
captain ; “ did you suppose we came to get a whack 
at a share of your prize-money ? Here, try your 
luck. Buddy” — handing Luxy his rifle ; “ I want to 
see if you can hit something.” 

Luxy grinned, hesitating. “Will that thing 
kick ?” he asked. 

“ Oh, get away, you’re a coward,” said Frankie ; 
“ let me have that ; you couldn’t hit the bottom of 
that pit, anyhow.” 

He then knelt down, and with a single shot settled 
Yah Sing’s claim to the government bounty. The 
ball had struck the tiger between the eyes and 
passed through the center of his skull. 

“There! that’s the way to do it, Luxy,” said he, 
turning back with a triumphant smile. “ How, you 
see, you missed a chance to say you killed a tiger.” 

“ I hit him before you did,” growled the little 
darkey. 

“ Grot him again !” laughed the captain ; “ that 
little monk beats you all if it comes to shooting off 
his jaw, anyhow. Were you afraid that thing might 
jump the fence, after all. Lux ?” 

“Ho; I tell you what’s the matter with him,” 
said Frankie. “ About a year ago he saw a big vul- 
ture, sitting on a stump near a place where we had 
killed a snake, and in he ran to get m}^ father’s 
shotgun without asking anybody’s leave. The stump 
was just outside of our garden, and he slipped 
up to within a few yards of it ; but what do you 
suppose he did next ? Instead of putting the shot- 


A HUNTER'S PARADISE. 


51 


gun against his shoulder, he stuck it through the 
fence and took aim with his snout right square 
against the butt-end and his two eyes squinting 
along the center of the barrel. There was a heavy 
load of buckshot in, and when Lux pulled the 
trigger you could hear his teeth rattle clean across 
the yard ; the butt had struck him in the jaw hard 
enough to knock him over on his back, and since 
that time he hasn’t touched another shooting-iron 
of any kind. He says some of them seem to shoot 
both ways.” 

“I never did, now,” whimpered poor Lux, “but 
it looks like you can tell a story more than one 
way ; he used to tell folks I fainted, and the ole 
buzzard came to carry me off for dead.” 

“ Come on, now,” said our pigtail man, when the 
laugh had subsided ; “ maybe we catchee one in 
other pit.” 

“ That’s so ; let’s go and see,” said the planter ; 
“ it would be a joke if they could catch the partner 
of this striped thief.” 

“How long does it take a man to dig a pit of 
that sort?” I inquired. 

“ About a week,” said the planter, “ but a dozen 
Chinamen helping together will do it in less than a 
day.” 

“Wouldn’t it be better to save that trouble alto- 
gether ?” I asked ; “ we might have shot that fellow 
above ground.” 

“ Yes, but hardly with a single ball,” said Captain 
Yandivere; “ these Javanese tigers are not quite as 


52 


A HUNTER^S PARADISE. 


large as the Bengal kind, but they are big enough 
to take an amazing amount of killing. Up in the 
Barekop Mountains my horse once slipped in the 
rocks and slid down a cliff where I had to build 
steps with flat stones before I could get him out, 
and before I was done a she tiger crawled out of a 
ravine and made a leap at us, perhaps because we 
had stopped the only outlet of her den. My horse 
saw her in time and received her with a kick that 
sent her head over heels to the bottom of her 
ravine, and before she could know where she was, I 
fired both barrels of my shotgun at her, but she 
charged us again, and the horse almost stunned her 
by a second kick. I reloaded my gun as fast as I 
could, and I am sure that this time she got the full 
benefit of both barrels, for I let her come halfway 
up the gully before I fired, and I did turn her back, 
but she had strength enough left to crawl into her 
den, and when I looked for her she had disappeared.” 

‘‘Oh ! come quick, genl’men; the other pit is 
broken,” cried Luxy, who had run ahead of us ; 
“ there’s a lot of Chinamen around it, a-jabbering, 
and when I looked down I saw a large fat brute at 
the bottom ; it will take ten men to haul that 
out.” 

“ That’s too good to be true,” said the planter ; 
“ but, I declare, he is right,” he whispered when we 
came in sight of the pit, “ the brush is broken, sure 
enough.” 

“ There’s a tiger in there as big as a donkey,” 
insisted Luxy. 


A PABADJSK 


53 


“ No, bad luck ; that’s something else,” said the 
captain, after peering into the pit under the shade 
of his hand, “ but what can it be ? There are no 
bears in this part of the world. Oh ! come here,” 
said he, after a second look; ‘‘I’m blind if that 
isn’t a cabiroussa, a Javanese tapir. I can see his 
snout and his pig ears. You have to cook that 
thing and eat it. Yah Sing ; that’ll be a tough 
job to haul the fat brute out, and no bounty for 
such catches. You had better attend to your tiger 
first.” 

“ Me get him, too, allee same,” chuckled Yah 
Sing, after adding his share to the chatter of his 
countrymen. 

“ How in the world did that old potbelly happen 
to get in there ?” asked Frankie ; “tapirs don’t eat 
meat, do they ?” 

“Perhaps they do,” said Clarence; “I’ve seen 
them eat carrion, anyhow.” 

“ I believe I can give you a better explanation, 
this time,” said the captain ; “ though I know young 
Cotter beats me out of sight on natural history, 
nine times out of ten, you can’t bait a tapir with 
pork so long as there is any jungle cabbage in the 
market, but I guess this pig made as much noise as 
the other one, and the tapir mistook it for the 
squealing of a young one of its own kind — ‘ water- 
hogs,’ the natives call them, and they are really 
nothing but a large kind of porkers ; their flesh has 
the same taste, and they have the same kind of 
bristles instead of hair. Like wild hogs, they rush to 


54 


A HUNTER'S PARADISE. 


the rescue whenever they hear the outcry of their 
young ones, and hunters have sometimes been 
tackled by a whole herd of them. This one lost his 
own bacon by trying to save a pig’s; and his com- 
rades, I suppose, ran away when they saw him go 
overboard.” 


A HUNTER* S PARADISE. 


65 


CHAPTER Y. 

On our return trip to camp we took a beeline 
trail over the hills to come upon our workmen 
unawares, but even before the last ridge hove in 
view we could hear the distant clanking of their 
jungle-knives and the frequent crash of a falling 
tree. They were evidently hard at work. 

“I knew we could trust old Joe,” said the 
planter, referring to the native cook who had been 
put in charge of the coolies that morning ; “ these 
Java bucks are hard taskmasters if you give them 
a chance to bully their own countrymen. Just hear 
those hatchets go.” 

“ I’m glad you are back, boss,” said a Javanese 
youngster who had been intrusted with the func- 
tions of a water-carrier, and met us, pail in hand, 
at the foot of the ridge ; I looked for you four or 
five times, and I got afraid something had hap- 
pened.” 

“ What’s the matter, Chitty ?” laughed the planter; 
‘‘ did old Joe spank you for loafing so much ?” 

“ No, it wasn’t me he was after,” said the boy ; 
“but Hans Gorroo saw a snake as long as the 
Ranga boat bridge, and tried to watch it for you, 
but old Joe chased him back, and said he was going 
to report him.” 


66 


A HUNTER E PARADISE. 


“ISTever mind, now, Chitty,’’ said the planter; 
these boys will help you find him again ; you can 
show them the place after you get you get this pail 
filled.’’ 

‘‘ If you had only come a little sooner,” pouted 
the youngster, “you never saw such a brute. I 
just got a glimpse of it, and I thought the whole 
slope of that hollow was a- wriggling along.” 

“ Hurry up, then, and get your water,” said Clar- 
ence ; “ we’ll wait here for you, and I’ll pay you 
two groten if we find that thing back.” 

But when old Joe sounded his second dinner- 
gong, the serpent hunters returned, puzzled. 

“We found the place where that monster crawled 
through the weeds,” said Clarence; “and we 
tracked him nearly half a mile, but there the trail 
gave out, and I can’t see where he can be hiding 
out ; there are no very large trees around there, 
and nothing like a cleft or a cave.” 

“ He crawled into the leaves somewhere, I sup- 
pose,” said the captain. “ I wish we had Squire 
Behrens’ hound here ; it isn’t every dog that will 
track a boa, but this one did, and got bitten more 
than once, but always skipped out in time before 
they could get a hitch on him.” 

“ Perhaps you will get bitten yet, Clarence,” said 
Frankie. 

“ I told you to watch where you stepped ; we are 
four miles from home here, and the poison might 
have killed you before 'we could find help.” 

The young naturalist smiled superior. “Much 


A HUNTERS S PARADISE. 


57 


obliged to you, Frank,” said he, ‘‘but I declare, I 
thought you knew better than that; boas can’t 
poison you any more than a lizard can ; their snap- 
bites don’t amount to much if they can’t coil 
around and play you a game of bone cracking ; 
that’s what the captain meant by their getting a 
hitch on you.” 

Luxy found a squirrel nest after dinner, and cap- 
tured one of their half-grown 37^oungsters before it 
could scamper out of reach. The old ones had 
watched him from the top of the tree and never ceased 
growling, or ‘‘ barking,” as the Kentucky hunters 
call it, but he held on to his prize and contrived to 
cage it up in a tin pail, with a bag tied on top by 
way of lid. 

While we assisted the captain in driving his sur- 
veying stakes, our coolie guide came back from the 
pitfalls and*reported that the Chinese had landed 
both their captives. With the dead tiger they had 
no trouble at all, but their wa}^ of tackling the 
tapir was to cut steps in the walls of the pit and 
clamber in to stab him with sharp poles of sikkar- 
wood. After crippling him in every possible way, 
they went down and finished him with their axes. 

“ Hello, here comes Chitty racing with an empty 
pail,” said the captain ; “ I shouldn’t wonder if he 
tracked that snake for you, after all.” 

I found him,” cried Chitty, climbing over the 
logs, panting; “ get your guns, all of you, he’s in a 
tree, and he is after something. I saw the branches 
move near the top, as if some animal were climbing 
out of the way.” 


58 


A HUNTERS 8 PARADISE. 


“ Where is that tree, Chitty asked Clarence. 

“ I’ll show you,” said he ; ‘‘ it isn’t more than a 
hundred yards from where we gave up hunting this 
morning. Let’s hurry, now, before he takes another 
sneak.” 

We all started at a run, and had not yet reached 
the tree, when we could see the glittering coils of 
the boa winding over to the farther side, either to 
dodge meddlers or to get a better chance at her 
quarry in the top branches. 

“ I don’t see how she ever got there without 
leaving a trail in the leaves,” said Clarence; ‘‘she 
must have doubled back on her own track, and 
then slipped off somewhere into the thickets on the 
the right.” 

“Come this way,” said Frankie, who had walked 
slowly around the tree to get a glimpse of the 
refugees ; “ you can see them pretty plain from here ; 
they are two young jungle-cats, and that snake is 
closing in on them fast.” 

“ You are right, they are jungle-kittens,” said 
Clarence; “and maybe the Chinese shot their 
mother yesterday ; they were hunting in this very 
hollow before they struck the tiger trail — the way 
I understood our partridge-man.” 

“ I can’t see them at all,” said the captain, strain- 
ing his eyes in the flickering gleams of the after- 
noon sun ; “ are you sure they are no squirrels ?” 

“ Stoop down a little, captain,” said Frankie ; 
“can’t you see those speckled things below that 
highest fork on the left ?” 


A HUNTER 'S PARADISE. 


59 


“ Oh, to be sure — I do see them now. Then Cot- 
ter must be right, and they lost their mother. Bad 
luck never comes alone, it seems; that boa will 
collar them in another minute.” 

In the top of a gum-tree two young panther-cats 
had taken refuge near the end of the highest 
branch, and the boa was gradually approaching 
them by extending the upper part of its body, 
while the lower coils were braced in readiness for a 
sudden spring. The poor kittens seemed to be at 
their wit’s end ; the smaller of them crouched 
behind its comrade, who every now and then 
uttered a plaintive cry, but neither of them made 
the least visible motion. 

‘‘They must be bewitched or charmed,” whis- 
pered Chitty. 

But there was no witchcraft about it ; the boa 
had evidently cornered them by clever maneuver- 
ing, and with all the apparent sluggishness of her 
movements, she advanced in a way that continually 
improved her advantage, and enabled her to cut off 
the retreat of her victims. 

“ l^ow watch ; she is going to spring,” whispered 
Frankie. 

“ Let’s try and save those poor devils and catch 
them alive,” said Clarence. 

“Yes, let’s get our guns ready,” said the captain ; 
“ but hold on a minute, I want to study the tactics 
of that old dragon.” 

The boa had advanced to within three yards of 
the top branch, but she wanted to make sure of her 


60 


A HUNTERS S PARADISE. 


prey. After extending a few of her middle coils, 
she bent her head far back and slowly lengthened 
the disengaged part of her body, till it commanded 
a range of about ten feet in circumference, in case 
the cats should, after all, try a leap for life. 

“ I^’ow is our time,” said the captain ; she is get- 
ting ready.” Close behind the tree Avas a rock that 
enabled us to climb up high enough to rest our 
guns against the lower branches, for we wished to 
preserve the skin of the boa, and hit her head with- 
out damaging the rest of her body. 

But we had waited too long. The kittens had 
retreated to the very end of the branch and seemed 
half -inclined to risk a leap; but they still hesitated, 
and one of them had just uttered its whimpering 
cry w^hen all at once the boa threw herself forward 
with shot-like suddenness, and in the same moment 
almost her coils had encircled the bodies of the tw^o 
tree-cats. Bracing herself back, she Avrenched them 
from their branch, and her crushing folds had 
already stifled their shrieks when at last the broad- 
side of her head became visible for a moment, and 
our three shots went off in rapid succession. 

“ Look out, dowm there !” shouted the captain. 
And with a howfl that would have done credit to 
an Australian savage, Luxy sprang out of the Avay 
and rushed into the next bushes. The poor little 
imp had cause to be scared ; the boa, wild cats and 
all had plunged down within two yards of his feet, 
and Avithout releasing her captives, the dying 
monster struck out left and right, Avith an energy 
that made the leaves fly in every direction. 


A HUNTER *8 PARADISE. 


61 


The boa seemed bent on mischief ; every wriggle 
jerked her forward, and we saw to our dismay that 
she was moving straight in the direction of a bush 
where we had deposited our coats and satchels. 
But before she reached that bush her struggles 
ceased. Her coils relaxed, and the two kittens now 
disengaged themselves and crawled toward the foot 
of our rock, though for one of them deliverance had 
come too late : she dragged her hindlegs as if the 
boa had broken her backbone. 

“Hurrah for my two groten!” shouted Chitty, 
who had been hiding behind a tree, and Luxy, too, 
now advanced with a stout club, but had hardly 
reached the foot of the tree when the boa revived, 
and once more the lashing of her tail filled the air 
with a whirl of flying leaves. In his endeavor to 
dodge her blows the poor darkey had to jump up 
and down like a girl playing at skip-rope, while 
Chitty had whisked back into his hiding-place and 
was shrieking with laughter. 

“ I shouldn’t like to damage her skin if I can 
help it,” said Clarence Cotter ; “ but we have to 
finish her somehow or other or she’ll get back in the 
jungle.” 

“ Hold on. I’ll settle her for you,” said the cap- 
tain, and drawing his heavy hunting-knife he 
almost severed the monster’s head from its body. 
In the next moment he had to save himself by a 
quick back spring, but there was no need of a 
second blow. With a convulsive tremor the boa 
turned over on her side, and then lay still, and be- 


62 


A HtlNTER'8 PARADISE. 


fore her hide had “ shrunk” as taxidermists call it, 
we had tied her to a bush and skinned her, while 
Luxy was watching us from behind the rocks. 

‘‘ She won’t bother you any more. Lux,” laughed 
Frankie ; “ come on and help us stretch this skin.” 

But Luxy shook his head. ‘‘ You can try that if 
you like,” said he, “ but she won’t fool me again ; I 
don’t believe she is h,alf dead yet.” 

“ Halloo, don’t let us forget those kittens,” said 
Clarence ; “ I thought Chitty was watching them 
for us.” 

“Here’s one of them, anyhow,” said Frank, 
holding up one of the poor little waifs by the 
nape of its neck ; “ it’s all limp and dazed, but it 
seems to have one of its nine lives left.” 

“ Where’s the other, I wonder ?” said Clarence, 
looking all around the stonepile on the other side 
of the rock. 

“ He cannot be far,” said Chitty ; “ I saw them 
both together not more than four minutes ago. 
Here he is,” he cried, after peeping into a crevice 
of the rock, “ but he’s dead ; he crawled in there to 
die.” 

“ What made him do that, I wonder,” said the 
captain. “ 1 have worked in the mines, and more 
than once we came across a cave full of the skulls 
and jawbones of dead animals. It often puzzled 
me how they got in there, but this seems to account 
for it.” 

“For what?” asked Frankie. 

“ Why, has it never puzzled you what becomes of 


A HUNTER* 8 PARADISE, 


63 


dead animals said the captain ; “ how many 
millions of birds, squirrels and lizards must die 
every year, and we hardly ever find their dead 
bodies, even where beasts of prey are very scarce. 
Birds cannot all perish on their travels ; here in the 
tropics they never stray far from their nests ; are 
they eaten by ants and worms ? Why do we not 
find their feathers and other things that ants have 
no use for? And what becomes of their bones? 
The true explanation is probably that every dying 
animal crawls into the best hiding-place it can 
find.” 

We reached the Banga Eiver the next morning, 
and while our woodcutters were clearing a tangle 
of willow-bushes we took a stroll out on the open 
beach, and got close enough to a troop of wanderoo 
monkeys to watch them at a curious occupation. 
They were catching crabs. The ocean tide makes 
the river rise twice a day; but in the sandhills, just 
above high-water mark, thousands of river crabs 
had made their burrows, and the monkeys found it 
easier to trap them than, to dig them out. They 
bent their hands back as far as they could, and 
after selecting a promising hole they thrust in their 
arms, wrist foremost, and if the crab was at home 
it generally resented the affront by trying to pinch 
the obtrusive object. But as soon as its pincers 
closed upon the hairy hollow between the fingers 
and the forearm of the intruder, the monkey jerked 
his hand out, and with it, nine times out of ten, a 
big wriggling crab. The rest was easy. Before 


64 


A HUNTERS S PARADISE. 


the poor pincher had the least chance to regain his 
hole, the monkey snatched him up, and with a 
quick grip broke off his weapon of defense and then 
proceeded to eat him with an absolute disregard of 
his protesting wriggles. In the same way the 
African baboons eat sea-crabs and even scorpions, 
though the least mistake in handling such tidbits 
would make them a rather expensive breakfast. 

As soon as they got their crabs out on the open 
sand, the wanderoos had it all their own way, but 
fishing in a dark hole is a riskier business, and it 
seemed as if now and then the anglers came to 
grief ; for we saw one of them jerk out his empty 
hand, rub it against his knee, examine it with a 
look of indignant surprise and then look at the 
crab-hole, as if he wanted to reproach the proprietor 
with a gross abuse of confidence. 

While we watched the picnic party from behind 
a bush, one of them came within forty yards of our 
hiding-place and stuck his head in a hole where the 
last storm had probably left a pool of rain-water. 
As he bent over, Captain Yandivere cocked his rifle 
and whispered a few words in my ear. He was 
going to try a trick which the California hunters 
call creasing an animal; that is, to disable it for a 
few minutes without killing it or permanently 
crippling it. The ball has to graze its back-bone 
without breaking it. But with small animals that 
plan has not much chance of success except from a 
very short distance, and when we picked our 
monkey up we found that the captain’s bullet had 


A HUNTER'S PARADISE. 


65 


done more than we bargained for. The poor little 
rogue was still alive, for he bit [my boot when I 
turned him over, but his backbone had been so 
badly injured that he was unable to move a limb or 
even to scream ; all he could do was to clutch his 
hands and gasp. But a minute after he began to 
squeak, so we thought he might, after all, recover, 
and tied him to a tree, where we intended to pass 
in the afternoon. 

Our Javanese guide then took us a quarter of a 
mile farther upstream to show us a colony of river- 
swallows, slate-colored birds with long, thin wings, 
and for their size about the boldest creatures of the 
wilderness. They had their nests in the cavities of 
the steep river bank and darted directly at our 
heads whenever we tried to approach their reserva- 
tion. We could have knocked them down by dozens 
with a walking-stick, and they seem to rely on the 
superstition that considers it unlucky to kill a 
swallow under any circumstances. 

While we were watching their aerial waltzes 
from a respectful distance we heard the squeaks of 
our wanderoo rise to piercing yells, and before long 
those yells were answered from the shore thicket, 
and we could see a couple of our prisoner’s relatives 
clamber down the bank and approach his tree with 
all the caution of a scout reconnoitering the outposts 
of a hostile army. They would stop every now and 
then and rise on their hindfeet to get a better view 
of our party, and one of them even seemed to shade 
his eyes, like a bareheaded boy peering at some 
sunward object. 


66 


A HUNTER' 8 PARADISE. 


“ Shall we make those chaps skip out said 
Frankie, cocking his gun. 

“]Sro, don’t,” said the captain; “wait, let’s see 
what they are going to do.” 

We sat down on a log of driftwood, and the wan- 
deroos seemed to make up their minds that it would 
be no use waiting for a better chance to assist their 
distressed relative. Our prisoner had stopped 
yelling as soon as he had caught sight of the rescu- 
ing party, but now began to voice his impatience 
in coughing barks, and had evidently recovered 
from his nervous shock; for he twisted about in all 
directions, and frequently attacked the tough cords 
with his teeth. 

“ There they come,” whispered Clarence ; “ now 
watch. They will try to untie those strings.” 

Captain Yandivere took out his telescope. 

The rescuers approached their captive brother as 
warily as if they expected to touch a trap every 
moment, but finally seemed to realize his predica- 
ment, and turned him round and round to study the 
details of our contrivance. The captive had turned 
over on his back, and lay still like a crippled soldier 
under the hands of his surgeons. 

“Just look at them, will you?” said the captain, 
handing me his telescope. “ As sure as I’ve eyes in 
my head they’re trying to open our knots ; you can 
see them work away with their teeth and claws, 
like sailors in a tangled rigging.” 

“Hadn’t we better shoot now?” asked Frankie; 
“ they will have him loose in another minute.” 


A HUNTER'S PARADISE. 


67 


“ No ; hold on,” said Clarence ; “ let’s try a dif- 
ferent plan, and see how near they will let ns come 
if we walk slow.” 

"W e all rose and sauntered along the beach, as if 
we were in no special hurry to interfere with the 
proceedings of the rescuing committee. 

But they saw us come, and for a moment stopped 
to watch our movements, and then cast a look at 
the thicket, as if to calculate the chances of a rapid 
retreat. We could hear their excited grunts; they 
were exchanging opinions on a change of programme, 
but seemed to agree that it would never do to relin- 
quish their enterprise without a last effort, and both 
suddenly fell upon the prisoner and attacked his 
fetters with an energy that appeared to have de- 
feated its object, for the prisoner rose with a screech 
of pain and a reproachful grin at his friends, who 
had probably got their teeth in his hide. 

They dropped him at once, and after another glance 
at our advance scampered off in the direction of the 
thicket, and I Avas almost glad to see that Frankie’s 
shot did not reach its mark. It only served to re- 
double the speed of the fugitives, and from the 
shelter of the willow-thicket they began giving us 
bits of their mind, like scared dogs after they reach 
the protection of their master’s yard. Their angry 
screams were echoed from far and near, and before 
we left, half a hundred of our long-tailed neigh- 
bors seemed to have assembled for an indignation 
meeting. 

There were several native fishermen on the beach, 


68 


A HUNTERS S PARADISE. 


and at their request our guide asked us to follow 
them to a good shooting-place two miles farther 
down stream. All their thoughts were bent on 
“ water-cows,” as they call the fat river dolphins 
that swarm in the Java coast waters. At a point 
where the high bluff was broken by the entrance of 
a creek they had discovered a water-cow landing — 
a place where a number of the clumsy, walrus-like 
creatures had wriggled ashore to sun themselves — 
and before we reached the spot some of our barefoot 
friends had already slipped down to the water’s 
edge and concealed themselves behind the thick 
reed patches. 

Against the tough hide of a dolphin their arrows 
were utterly useless, and they were anxious to see 
what our rifles could do. Eight above the landing- 
place the steepness of the bluff was increased by the 
creek that had undermined a portion of it, so that a 
person standing at the upper brink could only get 
a bird’s-eye view of the objects below ; but still the 
natives asked us to approach on our hands and feet 
for fear of alarming the ‘‘ cows.” There were five 
of them, four old ones and a thick-headed young 
bull, all wriggling in the warm sand like grubs in a 
furrow, and naturally quite unconscious of danger 
in a country where the weapons of the natives could 
hardly scratch them, and where even the snap of a 
crocodile’s jaws would glance off their thick, slippery 
hide. 

After a whispered consultation with one of the 
fishermen, we concluded to let the calf go and direct 


A HUNTER'S PARADISE. 


69 


our attack to the two biggest cows, in the hope of 
killing at least one of them. I should have liked to 
watch the antics of the uncouth brutes a little 
longer, but there was no time to lose ; somehow or 
other the dolphins had become uneasy, and the oldest 
one began to waddle back toward the water. That 
was our moment. “Maun — Div — Tri!” counted 
our Javanese guide, and at the last word our three 
shots went off together, and a second after a fourth, 
for one of the fishermen had borrowed an old blun- 
derbuss from a neighboring farmer, and had to pull 
with three fingers before he could move the rusty 
trigger. The three shots, though, had done the 
work. One of the cows lay dead, and another floun- 
dered in the sand like a sea-fish after the retreat of 
the tide, and before it could regain the water the 
natives had rushed out of their hiding-places and 
cut off its retreat. 

Two of them attacked it with their knives, and 
the rest, without a moment’s hesitation, jumped in 
the Kanga Kiver and poked it with their long sticks 
whenever it approached the water. 

On our return to Kempen’s that night. Captain 
Yandivere found a messenger from Khydershaven, 
asking him to superintend the unloading of a cargo 
of bridge timbers on the Witt Bay Kiver, and with 
our landlord’s consent I agreed to accompany him, 
to get a glimpse of the south-coast country. 

But the boys would not let me go till I had 
promised solemnly to be back by the end of the 
week, and they all went along as far as Herrick’s 


70 


A HUNTERS 8 PARADISE. 


Berg the next morning, to show us a short-cut trail 
through the foothills. 

“What did I tell you?” said Captain Yandivere 
when we halted on the ridge to take a farewell 
look at the Kanga Yalley. “Did you ever have a 
better week’s sport in your life ?” 


THE END. 


I 



ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS 


BY 

FREDERICK GERSTAECKER, 

Author of ^'The Gold Hunters,"" '‘'River Pirates,"'"' ''The Old Convent^''' 
"Fred Wildman's Adventures,"" "Cruises in a 
Summer Sea,” etc., etc. 

TRANSLATED FOR AMERICAN BOYS BY 

FELIX L. OSWALD. 


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ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS. 


CHAPTEE I. 

The proprietor of a California carriage factory 
not long ago advertised wagons “ warranted to 
stand the wear and tear of the roughest roads on 
earth,” but the natives of the Argentine Kepublic 
manage to beat him at that game. They build 
wagons that can be used in a country where there 
are no roads at all. 

One fine midsummer morning a contrivance of 
that sort came tearing down the plain that slopes 
from the foothills of the Andes to the valley of the 
Plata Kiver, and to judge from the way the wheels 
swung to and fro and righted again after desperate 
bangs against stumps and stones it would have 
made a foreigner think the spokes must be made of 
Swedish iron. But they were woodwork, after all, 
and the secret of their strength consisted in the 
number of rawhide straps that had been twisted 
around the hub of the wheel, around a notch in the 
middle of every spoke, and back again to the hub, 
till the wheel looked like a bandaged cuttlefish. 
A homelier-looking apparatus was never hitched to 
a horse ; but it answered its purpose, and the six 


74 


ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS. 


pampa ponies went across the open plain at a gal- 
lop, and at a sharp trot across the dells that become 
brooks in the rainy season, but were now mostly 
nothing but streaks of dry gravel. 

The horses of an Argentine overland coach are 
changed twice a day, and after being taken back to 
their home pastures get a rest of a week or two, 
according to luck ; but while they are in harness 
they have to hustle, and it does not often happen 
that one of them breaks down altogether. In case 
of such accidents the travelers can shift with four 
horses for a few miles, and, besides, they generally 
have an adelaniero., an outrider, who gallops ahead, 
like the scouts of our prairie caravans, and leads a 
reserve pony or two. 

The adelantero of this special coach was a well- 
dressed young rancher, who amused himself with 
dropping the bridle of his reserve horse every once 
in awhile and lariating him again the moment he 
tried to bolt. There was no risk of trespassing on 
anybody’s reserve; this was no man’s land, without 
a trace of cultivation for miles and miles, and the 
outrider seemed rather surprised when he caught 
sight of a man waving his serape from a ledge of 
cliffs at the brink of another rambla^ or dry-gravel 
dell, about half a mile ahead. 

His surprise increased when he saw that the man 
on the rarribla had no horse. Horses are so cheap 
and abundant in the Argentine prairies that even 
children ride to school, and the wealthy stock- 
raisers would make a wayfarer a present of an old 


ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS. 


75 


'broncho^ as a well-to-do American farmer might give 
a tramp a pair of old shoes. 

‘‘Halloo! If this isn’t Tony Ortiz,” cried the 
adelantero, recognizing the son of a former neigh- 
bor ; “ why, Tony, old boy, what’s up ?” 

“What’s down, you mean,” said the young fel- 
low, after mounting the reserve horse, as a matter 
of course, and shaking hands with his friend ; 
“ Casas Blancas is down, they say ; they had a devil 
of an earthquake on the river, and Pete Eamon told 
me there isn’t a house left standing in the lower 
part of the town. Didn’t you feel that shock last 
night? We felt it so plain here that our horses 
stampeded, and I haven’t been able to find my 
pony to save my life.” 

“ Oh I that accounts for old man Gruyo being 
away from his ranch this morning,” said the out- 
rider ; “ we found the house locked up and the very 
dogs gone — yes, and I see that also accounts for our 
horses stumbling in that funny way yesterday 
evening ; they plunged like breaking down to- 
gether, and we couldn’t imagine what struck them; 
one of the ladies said it felt like the coach crossing a 
log and bumping down suddenly on the other side.” 

“Ladies? oho, that’s what made Pancho Perez 
turn adelantero, is it?” 

“Hush up, you sinner,” laughed the outrider; 
“ they are old women, both of them, and I only 
went along as a matter of courtesy — the last thing 
I could do for my old teacher. Captain Sebastian ; 
you know, he’s going along to Buenos Ayres, and I 
have my doubts if we will ever see him again.” 


76 


ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS. 


“ Along — what ? Who else is going ?” 

“ The family of Don Houston, the Yankee land 
owner ; he met his chance in the city, they say — 
bought land just before it Avas laid out in lots for a 
new street. His wife and sister are going to join 
him, and his son graduated this year ; so I do not 
expect we will see him again, either.” 

“ John Houston, you mean ? Is he with you, too ?” 

“Yes; and about half a dozen of his chums; 
going to pass their vacations in the city. Two of 
them are English and one is a Frenchman or 
Belgian. Poor old Mendoza! our town’s on a 
down grade in spite of the fine climate those foreign- 
ers are raving about ; we can’t compete with the 
tide-water cities. And now, another earthquake! 
Casas Blancas all in ruins, you say ?” 

“ Yes,” said the young rancher, “ and that’s what 
I Avas going to see you about ; some of the white 
people might Avant to go your way to find friends 
or help, and if you are not in a special hurry you 
might camp here a few hours till I gallop across 
and tell them of this chance.” 

“ I don’t know,” said Don Pancho ; “ they are in a 
sort of a hurry, but — Avell, you stop right here for a 
minute, Avill you, and I’ll gallop back and see the 
old man and the ladies.” 

“ Poor people, poor people !” cried Mrs. Houston 
Avhen the adelantero delivered his message ; “ Avhy, 
of course we Avill wait ; some of them might be in 
need of help, and we have room for tAvo or three of 
them, if they are going onr Avay.” 


ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS. 


77 


“Yes, and it can’t do any harm to pack our 
cargo a little tighter,” said the captain ; “ those tin 
boxes and bottle baskets back there keep a rattling 
that you can’t tell a stumble from an earthquake. 
By what time will your friend be back, you 
think ?” 

“ Oh, long before night, anyhow,” said the out- 
rider. “ I’ve a good mind to gallop along and make 
him hurry a little.” 

“ Well, we’ll wait for you till four in the after- 
noon, and not a minute longer,” said the mayor- 
domo of the coach, a sunburned old gaucho who had 
taken a contract to reach the terminus of his trip 
in a certain number of days, and now wanted to 
assert his right to a casting vote. “Let’s pull 
ahead, anyhow, till we reach that rambla ; we can 
while away time digging for water in the gravel 
holes.” 

“ Yes, and there seems to be all sorts of game 
around here,” said John Houston ; “ I saw three rab- 
bits when we crossed the last creek, and J ulius here 
noticed a gang of bush-pheasants. I wish we had 
brought our dogs along.” 

The travelers went into camp, and about ten 
minutes after the youngsters had scattered with 
their shotguns Mrs. Houston heard the crack of a 
shot, and Master Emile, John’s French schoolmate, 
came running up flourishing a long-tailed bird 
about the size of a prairie-grouse. 

“ What d’ye call that fellow ?” he asked ; “ look 
at his wings and breast; isn’t he a beauty ?” 


78 


ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS. 


“ That’s a sort of a pheasant, too, to judge bj his 
tail,” said the professor. 

. “ Yes, but a pheasant can fly, and this thing can’t 
or won’t,” said the young hunter ; “ he kept running 
ahead of me till I thought I could race him down 
and knock him with a stick.” 

“ That’s a ‘ bushmaster,’ ” explained the mayor- 
domo ; “ those rascals can outrun a turkey, and this 
one probably thought he could reach a thicket 
ahead of you and never be seen again ; but they can 
fly, too ; if you had put a hound on his track you 
had seen him fly up mighty quick.” 

Two more shots rang out, but Emile waited in 
vain to compare his prize with the next trophy. 
“ Oh ! I thought so ; they are shooting at chaparral 
chickens,” laughed the mayor-domo ; “ if you cripple 
one of them, it’s ten to one that he will strike the 
ground running and whisk into a hiding-place 
before you can get a second shot. It will be differ- 
ent to-morrow when we strike the open pampa. 
Confound this bushland, just scrub-wood enough to 
hinder you and not enough for shade. Hello — here 
comes Master Juan at a double quick.” 

“ Come this way, Emile, and all of you,” cried 
John Houston; “hurry up, Henry Bennett saw an 
ostrich in that copse of mesquite bushes over 
yonder, and if we get all around him one of us may 
get close enough for a sure shot.” 

“ Too late — there goes your ostrich,” laughed the 
professor ; “ a rhea, you mean ; the true ostriches 
are not running about wild on our side of the her- 


ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS, 


79 


ring pond; but holy blizzard! isn’t that fellow 
making good time I He’ll reach the La Plata before 
night if he keeps on the way he’s going.” 

“ What a pity,” said John ; I’d give a dollar to 
get a shot at that fellow or see him close by.” 

“ Paper or silver ?” asked one of the cowboys, 
who had ridden the leader horses ; ‘‘ say silver, and 
I’ll run him down for you.” 

“ Silver, then ; he’s got too much of a start, 
though, and — ” But the cowboy was already in 
the saddle. Crushing down his hat, he just paused 
long enough to unbuckle the strap of his bola-rope, 
and then set his broncho a-flying through the brush- 
wood that skirted the course of the rambla. The 
‘‘ostrich” had kept along the margin of a little 
tributary brook, and had already begun to slacken 
his speed, when the sound of the approaching gal- 
lopade caused him to turn his head. The very next 
moment that head disappeared. The rhea had 
ducked, like a turkey running through half-grown 
wheat, and dived into the shrubs of the side brook ; 
but a few hundred yards farther those bushes sub- 
sided into mere briers, and realizing the hopeless- 
ness of his first plan, the ostrich crossed the dell and 
emerged on the open level of a broad plateau with 
no other cover in sight for two miles ahead. The 
ground up there was tufted only with a few whisps 
of alpaca grass, and here the race for life began in 
earnest. 

The moment the broncho had caught sight of the 
quarry his rider could dispense with the use of his 


80 


ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS. 


long spurs ; the little horse seemed to know that he 
was booked for a winning race, and evidently tried 
to finish his job without loss of time and get back 
to his nice grass-patch on the brink of the rambla. 

“ Hurrah !” he’s gaining on him every jump !” 
cried the boys from their observatory on the roof 
of the big coach ; ‘‘ there goes the bola — now watch 
— good for Joe Bias ! He’s made his dollar.” 

“ Yes, he’s got him,” said the major-domo, “ but 
he shouldn’t drag him like that if he knew you 
liked to see him alive.” 

The cowboy had wheeled around and came gallop- 
ing back dragging his prize like an old bundle of 
sheepskins, and never turning his head till he pulled 
up at the side of the pampa-coach. 

“You killed him, Joe,” said the major-domo ; “ he 
did get up once or twice, but he couldn’t stand your 
gait across such ground.” 

“ Hever mind, here’s your dollar, amigo,” said 
John Houston. “ I must say your bolas beat our 
rifle bullets out of sight. What a big beast he looks 
with his neck and legs stretched out that way ; he 
must have been more than seven feet high. Let’s 
measure him.” 

“Yes, he’s all right now,” laughed the cowboy ; 
“the live ones ain’t handy pets to have around. 
This one would have kicked the top of your head off 
if you fooled around him with a tape-line.” 

“ How far is Casa Blanca from here ?” asked Mrs. 
Houston. 

“ About twelve miles due north of us,” said the 


ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS. 


81 


professor, consulting his pocket-map, “twelve to 
fourteen miles ; why 

“ I must have been mistaken, then,” said the old 
lady ; “ while you were watching that race I thought 
several times I heard something like a yell of many 
voices from far away, and I was thinking of those 
poor people in that earthquake town ; maybe a 
shattered building came tumbling over their heads, 
I imagined.” 

“ I heard it too, madam,” said the major-domo, 
“ but I think it was something else. There are 
troops of wild dogs in the pampa south of us, and 
if forty or fifty of them get a yelping on the 
tracks of a deer you can hear them a long way off.” 

“Wonder if our friends are on their way back?” 
said Professor Sebastian about an hour after dinner. 
“ Don Perez thought he would be back by noon, 
and they ought to be here now or in sight, anyhow ; 
it’s after three o’clock.” 

“ Here they come now !” shouted John Houston 
about half an hour later ; “ let me see that telescope, 
professor ; yes, I can tell Don Ortiz by his striped 
serape ; they didn’t bring us many passengers, after 
all ; Pancho’s got something in front of him like a 
big bundle, but maybe it’s a child in a shawl.” 

“Yes, it’s a child,” said theprofessor after adjust- 
ing the glass. 

“ Colonel Salinez’s little girl, I shouldn’t wonder ; 
I now remember that he wrote to me a month ago, 
asking if we would have room for a passenger and 
a half to the city.” 


82 


ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS. 


“He meant himself and his child,” said Mrs. 
Houston ; “ maybe he got killed, poor man, and 
they are sending her east to her uncle.” 

“ You were right, professor,” she added, when 
the two young ranchers trotted across the gravel- 
bed of the rambla ; “ that’s little Kosa Salinez, but 
she doesn’t look as if there had anything happened, 
does she, Don Pancho ?” 

“ Hot to her folks, I am glad to say,” reported 
the outrider ; “ but there are sixty houses in ruins, 
and the colonel got an appointment on a relief 
committee and has to send his little girl in your 
care. Here’s the letter he gave me, professor.” 

“ Sixty houses ! why, there cannot be people 
enough left under roof to help the sick,” said Mr. 
Houston’s sister. “I was in Casa Blanca a year 
ago, and I do not think it looked as if there could 
be a hundred houses in the place.” 

“The whole town is more or less damaged, 
madam,” said Don Ortiz, “ but you know it’s only 
ten miles from Kio Yerde, and I think I counted 
three dozen wagons that came with a rescuing 
party this morning. The Kio Yerde dragoons 
would have been sent over, too, but they started 
them on the trail of a gang of Indians, last Wednes- 
day night. There’s a report of a hundred Pampa 
Indians having crossed the river at Martin’s ford 
last week.” 

“ A nice day this for good news, isn’t it ?” grunted 
the major-domo ; “ a hundred Pampa devils right 
in our track, and, as usual, no troopers in town 
when you need an escort.” 


ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS. 


83 


“ I understand they chased a part of them back 
already,” said Don Pancho ; about noon a rancher 
rode into town Avith the neAA^s that they heard 
volleys of carbine shots near Argo’s Bend, and yells 
as if they Avere chasing their game in the direction 
of the Pinta Yalley.” 

“ Maybe that’s Avhat you heard an hour before 
dinner, Emory.” said Mr. Houston’s sister. 

“ I wish Ave Avere a hundred leagues farther east,” 
muttered the major-domo. 

But the boys did not regret the delay. If Don 
Pancho had brought them a pet monkey, he couldn’t 
have done more to improve the prospect for fun ; 
their neAV felloAV passenger was as lively as a pine 
squirrel and made herself at home before she had 
been half an hour aboard — clambering left and 
right over laps and shoulders and establishing 
hiding-places in the nooks of the cargo. Haya !” 
— “go it,” she baAvled out Avhenever the horses went 
at full gallop, and seemed tickled Avith every straw 
— the sand-Avhirls around the Avheels and the danc- 
ing motion of the big provision baskets. 


84 


ADVENTUnE8 IN THE PAMPA8. 


CHAPTEE II. 

The travelers stopped a few miles east of the 
Eana Eiver that night, and thanked their stars that 
they had brought their own camping outfit along. 
The wayside taverns, so-called, consisted only of a 
liquor shop with a big corral, for the accommoda- 
tion, or at least safekeeping, of horses and mules ; 
and a bivouac on a garbage pile would have been 
preferable to a night’s lodging in the den of the 
innkeeper. Chickens roosted on the rafters of the 
half-finished hovel, pigs ran in and out, and a gang 
of quacking ducks seemed to have established their 
headquarters under the supper table. Piles of dirt 
had been swept into the chimney-corners and sent 
out spurs projecting far beyond the hearthstone 
toward the middle of the room. 

“ Does your mother ever clean this place ?” John 
Houston asked a chuckle-headed little boy when the 
old hag in charge of the meat kettle had stepped out 
for a minute. 

“ Yes — sometimes on Sunday,” said the young- 
ster, after a conference with his memory of the dis- 
tant past. 

Mrs. Houston groaned. 

“Why, madame they are Indians in all but 
half a shade of complexion,” laughed the professor ; 


ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS. 


85 


“ this is one of those households an English friend 
of mine found in the pampas where he made the 
good wife a present of a bar of soap, and that same 
evening got it back for supper, flavored with garlic 
and garnished with little pork sausages.” 

They stayed just long enough to warm their tea, 
and took supper under the canopy of the big army 
tent they had brought from Mendoza. 

Don Pancho and his friend left them the next 
morning, but they had no difficulty in finding a 
professional adelantero, who agreed to accompany 
them to the landing of the Buenos Ayres steamer, 
for a dollar and a half a day — short or long time — 
having got an inkling of the rumor about Pampa 
Indians and foreseeing the possibility of delays in 
the despohlado, or “ solitude,” as the Argentines 
call the thinly settled plain in the center of their 
national territory. 

What a beautiful morning gilded the peaks of 
the distant Andes when the night mists at last 
cleared away, and the little world of birds and in- 
sects shook off the spell of slumber ! Large, dark- 
blue butterflies flopped leisurely from shrub to 
shrub ; swarms of beetles and yellowish wild bees 
hovered about the copses of flowering buckthorn 
or took a morning drink from the chalice of a 
musk-liana; and wherever cattle were grazing in 
numbers, flocks of pampa paroquets could be seen 
wheeling about, screeching in chorus and every now 
and then rising skyward, as if to reconnoiter the 
surrounding country to better advantage. 


86 


ADYENTITBE8 IN TBE PAMPAS. 


Eattling along at full gallop, the coach passed 
herds of deer, and once in awhile got a glimpse of 
a wolfish-looking dog scowling at them from the 
wayside bushes, or espied an armadillo diving into 
a thicket of briers with the nimbleness of a grass- 
lizard. 

The Guachos had lit their cigarettes, and did not 
mind such everyday sights ; but at a point where 
the coach crossed a crest of rising ground, the 
adelantero suddenly rose in his stirrups, and shading 
his eyes, seemed to scan the northern horizon. 

‘‘What’s the matter?” asked the major-domo, 
seeing that his foreriders strained their eyes in the 
same direction — “ mira ” — poking the ribs of the 
professor at his side — “see that dust-cloud over 
yonder? Wonder if that’s our friends, the pampa 
cut-throats, Pancho was telling us about ?” 

“ E’o, avestruz (ostriches),” said one of the fore- 
riders, “ I can see the flopping of their wings — a big 
troop of them. But maybe you are right, there’s 
something chasing them, sure enough !” 

A second dust-cloud hove in view, and while the 
ostrich herd wheeled to the left, their pursuers 
halted, and then, changing their course to the right 
oblique, approached at a sharp trot. 

Yes, horsemen, and probably Indians, who had 
caught sight of the coach and abandoned their first 
quarry in quest of better game. 

“ There are only two of them,” said the professor, 
resting the tube of his telescope against a pole of 
the wagon roof ; “ Indians, to judge from the shape 


ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS. 


87 


of their serapes. There 1 they are galloping again 
— going to head us off, or cross the trail in front of 
us.” 

“ Anything else coming this way ? If it’s Indians 
the rest of the gang isn’t far off,” said the major- 
domo ; but the coast seemed clear ; not a moving 
speck now on the northern horizon. The two 
horsemen had accomplished their purpose, and 
halted left and right of the trail a few hundred 
yards ahead. 

“ They are Kio Hondo Indians,” said one of the 
outriders; “I can tell them by their long reed 
lances. Look there : one of them has got a bayonet 
for a spearhead.” 

The Indians did not stir, but halted, leaning on 
their lances, as if a momentary impulse of curiosity 
had prompted them to take a look at the palefaces 
and their queer rig. 

“ Compaheros,” said the old wagonmaster, lean- 
ing back from his seat, “ are your guns loaded ?” 

“Loaded and ready,” said John Houston but 
what do you mean ? Those two Indians ? They 
do not look as if they meant any harm. If they 
do, of course, we are ready.” 

“ That’s right,” said the old man. “ "Well, then,” 
as calmly as if he had been asking for the loan of a 
corn-cob pipe, “ will you please hand me that short 
rifle, and you take one of the others ; then wait till 
I count, and at the word ‘ three,’ you drop that fel- 
low on the right-hand side of the trail. I’ll attend 
to the one with the bayonet.” 


88 


ABVENTUBES IN THE PAMPAS. 


“You can’t possibly be in earnest, sir?” inter- 
posed the professor. “Those poor devils may be 
only waiting to beg us for a bit of bread, and they 
have no firearms, anyhow. It would be different if 
they were going to tackle us — but ” 

“ Better not give them a chance. Hand me that 
rifle.” 

“ No, sir,” said the professor, pushing the old 
musket out of reach ; “you hold that, Frank, till our 
major-domo cools off.” 

“Well, have your own way, for all I care,” 
grunted the old man ; “ its too late now, anyhow, 
but I didn’t know you were a ” 

“Were a what, sir?” cried the professor ; “speak 
out, don’t be afraid ; didn’t know I was a coward, 
you meant, didn’t you? Well, I don’t know it 
either. I’ve been a soldier in active service and 
smelt gunpowder pretty close, but you ain’t going 
to commit a murder if I can help it, let me tell 
you.” 

“ Oh, you told me once, and that’s enough,” said 
the old man, drawing in his horns. “ Of course it’s 
your own risk as well as mine — and maybe more 
than mine. I can stand it if you can, only a little 
precaution might have saved us a lot of trouble.” 

The professor made no reply, and in the next 
moment the coast had left the two suspects behind. 

“ A pity we didn’t get a chance for a good look 
at those fellows,” John Houston ventured to remark. 

“Don’t fret. Buddy,” laughed the major-domo; 
“ I should be much mistaken if we don’t get all the 


ADVEI^rTURES IN TEE PAMPAS. 


89 


chance we want yet, and more, too. I, for one, 
know what those chaps were after.” 

The next night camp was a deserted stockfarm, 
where an old half-breed sold them a bag of sweet 
potatoes for a handful of coppers, and entertained 
them with anecdotes about the good old times when 
trading caravans passed his rancho every week — 
long years ago, before the river-steamers had spoiled 
the overland trade. 

“ They don’t know that they are ruining us with 
their new inventions,” he said ; “ but the Indians 
seem to know it, and are getting saucier every day. 
Old Yegros, my first boss, employed three hundred 
men on this ranch, and could attend to all the red- 
skins that had a mind to try a war-dance on our 
land ; but what can a poor old hermit like myself 
do against a troop of those cut-throats ? All that 
saves me is getting so poor that it isn’t worth any- 
body’s trouble to rob me.” 

The next morning sun rose on the sea-like ex- 
panse of the central pampas, a plain with undula- 
tions not much higher than the billows of a lake in 
a summer breeze, and a film of grass, but almost 
devoid of perennial vegetation, except where here 
and there a coppice of mimosas had managed to 
survive the frequent fires. It was a warm morning, 
and the old major-domo had dropped his cigarette 
and drifted into the Land of l^od, when a sudden 
jolt of the wheels caused him to start up, and the 
next instant he had clambered upon the seat-board, 
and holding on to the wagon-roof with one hand, 
he shaded his eyes with the other. 


90 


ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS. 


“ No ostriches, this time, sehor,” said he, when 
the professor emerged from the folds of the sun- 
screen ; “ that means mischief, I fear.” 

The outriders had pulled up short and exchanged 
whispered remarks as they watched a broad dust- 
cloud rolling across the tableland in the far north- 
west. 

“ Let’s get out of this, men,” said the major-domo ; 
“ we might reach the Encinas ahead of them.” 

“How far is it to the next rancho, you think?” 
the professor asked the near forerider. 

“H’m — quien sale — perhaps three leagues, or 
three and a half.” 

“ Pull out, then ; we’ll have a good start, what- 
ever is coming this way.” 

Again the foreriders conferred in a whisper ; but 
after another glance at the approaching cloud they 
did ply their whips with a will, and the old coach 
fairly flew across the dusty plain. 

The wind was almost due northwest, too ; and 
for nearly half an hour the oncoming dust-whirls 
had become larger but not more distinct, while the 
travelers maintained their desperate speed, when 
the sound of distant yells mingled faintly, but at 
last unmistakably, with the clatter and crash of the 
gallopade. 

“ Diahlo f we are in for it, this time,” growled 
the major-domo; then suddenly leaping from his 
seat, and just catching the roof -pole in time to avoid 
a fall — “ what the thunder, men, are you going to 
do ?” 


ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS. 


91 


He received no reply, and none was needed, 
though John Houston and his friends w^ere at first 
at a loss to account for the conduct of the Guachos, 
who had stopped short again, and, bending down, 
had unhooked the straps that connected the harness 
of their horses with the iron rings of the wagon- 
gear. But the scandalous explanation followed 
when the four cowards seized their whips, and, with- 
out a word of excuse or a parting glance at the 
deserted travelers, galloped off in a southerly di- 
rection. 

“ Ho, hold on ; you are going to stay, anyhow !” 
yelled the major-domo, when the rider of the 
wheelhorse prepared to join the stampede; but the 
man whipped out a dirk-knife, a foot long, and 
galloped away with a whoop of derision. 

“ Shoot him ! shoot him dead, sir !” roared the 
major-domo ; “ just look at that ! took our last good 
horse and left this lame, sore-backed jade ! Blaze 
away; what the thunder are you waiting for ? Oh, 
the curse of Heaven on the day when I joined such 
a set of.’’ 

“ Keep cool, comjpadre^'* said the captain ; “ what 
good would it do us to stop that coward? He 
wouldn’t be worth an ounce of his rations if it 
should come to an actual fight.” 

‘‘ Oh, caraxo ! caraxo yelled the old man, 
clutching his hair with both hands; ‘‘nothing left 
but this skinful of lame bones !” 

Captain Sebastian never lost his sangfroid for a 
moment. “ Look here, com^anerof said he with 


92 


ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS. 


a sarcastic smile, “ain’t you missing your chance? 
You had better follow your friends before it’s 
everlastingly too late.” 

“ Follow h — growled the old bear ; “ what can 
I do with a — ” Then pulling up short, he seemed 
to recognize ^the wisdom of making the best of a 
possible chance to redeem his reputation. “ jSTo, 
no,” he said ; “ I wouldn’t leave you if I had the 
best saddle-horse in the State. I’ve pledged my 
word to see you through safe, and Pedro Carvallos 
isn’t the man to break his contracts. Are all your 
guns loaded ?” 

“ Yes, but we won’t need them, maybe,” said 
the professor ; “ John says he saw something very 
much like a troop of cows when the dust cleared a 
little, awhile ago.” 

“ Then they are not running like all that for 
nothing, captain. “ There will be hades to pay 
before we can get out of this, and the only piece 
of luck in all this trouble is that pond over 
yonder,” pointing to a little reed-fringed lagoon 
a stone’s throw from the wagon-trail ; “ a little 

drinking-water comes in handy if you get caught in 
a hot place.” 

“ What for mercy’s sake is the matter ?” inquired 
Mrs. Houston, who had just woke up from a morn- 
ing nap. 

“Hot much, I hope, madam,” said the professor 
kindly; “please, keep quiet; it maybe nothing 
but a troop of stampeded cows, but these Guachos 
scent Indians behind every bush and brier.” 


ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS. 


■ 


93 


But suppose we should have to stand a siege 
here asked the old lady, who seemed to have 
divined the situation ; we may have water enough, 
but our provisions ” 

“ Yes, the senora is right,” said the major-domo ; 
“ come this way, Don Juan ; are jou. a good shot ?” 

“ I hope so,” said John ; “ why ?” 

“Well, there are cows ahead of that gang, and 
they are coming this way at a lively rate; get your 
shotgun and put in a bit of chopped lead, if you 
have no buckshot. And then keep cool, if they 
come in range ; don’t blaze away at the biggest 
brute, but at the smallest ; it wouldn’t be fair to let 
the ladies chew tough bull-beef besides all other 
trouble.” 

“ Shoot a calf or a yearling, you mean ?” asked 
John ; “ but we don’t know who owns them, do we ?” 

“ Just listen to that,” said the old man pathetic- 
ally ; “ let me have that rifle, then, and I’ll bet you 
I know who will own the first calf that comes close 
enough.” 

“ Oh, I can do my own shooting,” said John ; “ but 
killing cattle like that without knowing who ” 

“Who raised them ? Well, look here; whoever 
he is, if he’s a white man, he would shoot us like 
mad dogs for letting our womenfolks and children 
starve when the pampa is full of galloping beef, and 
Old Hick on the trail of them.” 

“Well, you are right, maybe,” laughed John; 
“ but you must tell me where to aim, and I’ll attend 
to the rest.” 


94 


ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS. 


‘‘Eight close behind the shoulder every time, 
sonny,” said the old man. “ I’ve known bullets to 
hit a steer square in the head and glance off that 
you could hear the whistling a hundred yards away. 
Here they come now ; hold on, now — good luck ; 
see that yearling, that black one, right next to that 
big cow ?” 

John ran forward, and two shots rang out in 
quick succession, causing the vanguard of the stam- 
pede to swerve to the left, but even through the 
thick clouds of dust the major-domo had got a 
glimpse of the yearling staggering and breaking 
down at the very brink of the little lagoon. 

“ Good luck again,” he shouted. “ Stop shooting, 
now,” seeing two or three of John’s friends leap 
from the coach, guns in hand ; “we have beef 
enough now to do us a week, and it won’t do to 
waste one spoonful of powder.” 

“Ho, he’s right,” laughed John ; “ we have meat 
enough at all events, if we count in that old 
broncho.” 

“ Poor old brute, we did get near forgetting him,” 
said the major-domo ; “ let’s give him a chance for 
his life and disentangling the simple gear, he gave 
the old jade a farewell slap, but it was hardly able 
to stagger out of the way. In harness with five 
stout companions it had to gallop like the rest, and 
would have kept galloping till it dropped down 
dead, but standing still a few minutes seemed to have 
stiffened its old bones. By an extra effort it 
managed, however, to reach the brink of the little 


ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS. 


95 


pond, where it took a good, long drink, and then 
lay down alongside of the dead yearling and pro- 
ceeded to munch up all the green grass in reach. 

Don Sebastian, in the meantime, had not been 
idle. At first glance the old professor might have 
been mistaken for one of those dry-as-dust scholars 
that look in the busy world like a stuffed crow in a 
rookery. The world abounds with sages who could 
deliver lectures on the campaigns of Cyrus and 
Alexander the Great and recognize ancient statues 
from the mere shape of the head, but lose their 
own heads in the critical emergencies of practical 
life. 

But Don Sebastian Orello was a savant of a quite 
different type. He had been a cavalry officer 
before he took to teaching, and had followed the 
fortunes of Simon Bolivar for sixteen years. Withal 
he was a true caballero, a gentleman in the best 
sense of the word, and averse to superfluous blood- 
shed, but he knew the Pampa Indians too well to 
doubt that the safety of his companions might 
depend on dry powder and a steady aim if the 
suspicions of the runaway Guachos should prove to 
have been well founded. Far down south, in their 
native wigwams, the Argentine redskins are cour- 
teous and hospitable, and have even been known to 
offer a white visitor the chieftainship of a tribe 
to get the benefit of his superior knowledge ; but 
on the warpath they out-havoc the ISTorth Ameri- 
can Sioux and Comanches. They do not cross 
the border merely to plunder, but to revenge the 


96 


ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS. 


wrongs of their tribe, and deliberately commit all 
the deviltries that can be crowded into a limited 
number of days. They would think it bad form to 
sack a village and give the inhabitants a chance to 
get away, and begin by killing every man, woman 
and baby in sight, even at the risk of being over- 
taken by a superior force of avengers, and having 
to beat a retreat with their forage-bags less than 
half-filled. 

“ Put on new percussion-caps and keep your am- 
munition handy,” Don Sebastian ordered his men 
after distributing the available rifles ; “ there are 
three shotguns loaded with slugs, but do not touch 
them till I tell you ; they may turn the balance of 
luck in a close-range fight.” 

“ Thank Heaven for that south wind,” chuckled 
the major-domo ; they can’t gallop into us behind a 
screen of dust now — there ! what did I tell you ! 
you can see their heads quite plain.” 

Yes, here they come,” said the young French- 
man, twenty or thirty of them ; but pluck makes 
up for worse odds. One of my uncles was at Auer- 
stedt, where a French brigade stood its ground 
against sixty thousand Prussians.” 

“ That’s so,” grinned the professor, who could not 
help suspecting that his young friend was chattering 
to screw up his courage ; “ but keep still now — they 
have seen us and no doubt — watch out, they are 
going to charge ! Cock your rifle, John, and cover 
that big fellow with the red bandana ; that’s their 
chieftain, the way he guides them ; let’s both aim at 


ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS. 


07 


his breast and I don’t think we’ll both miss. Yes, 
and he’s forging to the front, too — ready, John, 
pull down on him !” 

The two shots rang out together, and the chief- 
tain’s horse made a wild sideward leap; the rider 
was swaying in his saddle and the next moment 
toppled over, while his horse reared up and came 
near upsetting a warrior in the rear rank. 

“We got him ! ITow, Frank and Emile aim low, 
boys ! Fire !” 

Another Indian bit the dust, and the horse of the 
man at his side began to stagger in a circle, obliging 
its rider to dismount and leap in the saddle of his 
fallen companion. 

“ All the rest of you, ready !” ordered the captain, 
“ now’s your time ; aim at the front-rank men from 
left to right the way I told you off — pull down 
altogether !” 

The captain himself had reloaded his rifle in time, 
and when the smoke of the mass-volley cleared 
away the hostile vanguard had been reduced to 
three men, two of them with decidedly unmanage- 
able horses. 

A new chief had taken command. At his orders 
the front rank fell back, and the second line halted 
a moment to give the troop time to re-form. 

“ Gods of good luck ! they are bunching,” shouted 
the professor. “ Quick, now ; get those shotguns ; 
don’t waste time ; aim square at the center of that 
crowd ; blaze away !” 

By way of supplement the old major-domo, too, a 


98 


ADTESTITREB IS THE PAMPAS, 


moment after banged off his musket; but the Indians 
had enough for one meal, and turning their horses, 
galloped back and never drew bridle till they had 
got clear out of shotgun range. Some forty-five 
slugs had peppered their lunch in that last volley, 
and the way they were crowded together only a 
few of their rear-rank men could have got off entirely 
unhurt. 

“ Hurrah ! didn’t I tell you !” screeched the young 
Frenchman. Then, with a sudden resolve to im- 
prove the chance for personal distinction : “ Let me 
make a dash, captain, and catch one of their run- 
away horses !” 

‘‘ For holy reason’s sake don’t ! Load, load as 
quick as el diablo will let you I” cried the major- 
domo ; “ they may be back every moment.” 

“Yes, he’s right,” said the captain; “load quick, 
but don’t spill more powder than you can help.” 

“ There — they are coming again !” shouted the 
major-domo; “hand me those caps — good! we’re 
ready again, all round.” 

But the redskins stopped halfway and then di- 
vided, one detachment of the troop wheeling to the 
left, the other to the right, to get a flank view of the 
hostile citadel. They were reconnoitering, probably 
to select a better point for their next attack, and 
could hardly fail to recognize the fact that the four 
windows on each side of the big coach had served 
the garrison as so many loopholes. 

“ They are going to tackle us on a different plan,” 
said the major-domo. 


ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS. 


99 


“ Never mind ; we’ll attend to them if they call 
again,” laughed the young Frenchman, whose cour- 
age had risen with the success of the first skirmish ; 
“I’ve got a revolver, too,” he added, “and a good 
poniard if it should come to a hand-to-hand fight.” 

“ Yes, and I’ve got a poker,” said little Rosa, who 
had crawled out of her hiding-place in the recess of 
the wagon, and now came clambering across the 
front seat, brandishing a big skewer. 

“ Good ! we’re safe now,” said the captain ; and 
even the ladies behind their barricade of provision 
boxes could not help joining in the general laugh. 


100 


ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS. 


CHAPTER III. 

The Pampa Indians had halted at a distance of 
half a mile, and seemed to hold a council of war. 

“ They are going to wait for night, the miserable 
cowards,” said the major-domo ; “ but they have to 
hurry up if they want to do any sneaking in the 
dark. We’ll have moonlight after nine o’clock, and 
morning peeps pretty early at this time of the year.” 

‘‘ Halloo ! here comes one of them at a trot,” said 
the professor ; “ maybe he is going to have a parley.” 

“ If he is, don’t let him come near us, for Heaven’s 
sake,” said the major-domo; “whatever he comes 
for, it’s nothing good, you may rely on that. A 
bullet is the best answer.” 

“Well, but it can do no harm to give him a 
hearing first,” said the professor. 

“ Say, Don Sebastian, just take a look at that 
fellow,” whispered the major-domo; “el diablotake 
me if that’s not one of those same red rascals we 
passed after leaving Las Penas ; don’t you see that 
broken-off bayonet at the end of his pig-sticker, and 
wasn’t I right when I asked you to put a charge of 
daylight through his cursed hide?” 

“ I can’t deny it any longer,” laughed the pro- 
fessor ; “ but it can’t be helped now ; it would never 


ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS. 


101 


do to take advantage of a fellow with a flag of truce. 
I’m going to take a note of this special gentleman, 
though, in case we should happen to meet him any- 
where else.” 

‘‘ Halt, there !” cried the major-domo, raising his 
musket when the messenger had approached within 
speaking distance ; “ what is it you want?” 

“ Euen amigo,” the Indian called back in pretty 
good Spanish ; “ good friend me, very good friend.” 

“ Diablo snatch you for a lying loafer,” muttered 
the old Guacho. Then raising his voice: “And 
what is it that good friend wants ?” 

“ Make peace with white men ; good peace ; can 
go where you want now ; Indians good ; not going 
to hurt you any more.” 

“Oh, is that it?” laughed the Guacho; “but you 
didn’t hurt us yet, that I know of, and if you want 
to make peace all you have to do is to go where you 
came from, and we’ll attend to the rest.” 

“ Yes,” said the Indian ; “ but blood been spilled ; 
big chief got shot and fell dead.” 

Well, that’s his own fault,” said the Guacho; 
“if you red thieves supposed you could ride us 
down and spear us like a flock of sheep, you made a 
bad mistake. We have powder enough for six such 
gangs as yours, and if you don’t believe it there is 
a very easy way to find out.” 

“ISTo, we good now, but big chief got killed,” re- 
peated the Indian ; “ have to pacify big chief, or his 
ghost come back and howl every night.” 

“ He’s got to howl, then,” laughed the Guacho ; 


102 


ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS. 


“ and if any of you fellows want to get pacified, we 
have buckshot enough to settle that in a hurry.’’ 

“ !N’o, no, make peace,” said the messenger ; “ can 
make peace right away, only pacify ghost first.” 

“ W ell, hurry up, then ; let’s hear how you are 
going to work it.” 

‘‘ Much tobacco,” was the fairly intelligible reply ; 
“ much knives and rings, and powder and lead, and 
rifies and blankets, and much brandy and tobacco.” 

“ Oh, is that all ?” sneered the Guacho ; “ get out of 
this, then, or something might drop right near your 
horse! Do you confounded thieves suppose we 
didn’t know you would take all that anyhow, if you 
were able ? Give you our rifles, eh ? What the 
diablo do you take us for ?” 

“ Well, can keep rifles, then,” said the negotiator, 
after a moment’s hesitation ; “ keep rifles and 
knives, but give us heap blankets and sugar and 
flour and brandy and money, and heap tobacco — 
never saw such a pile of tobacco ?” 

ITo, I didn’t see it ; that’s a fact,” laughed the 
Guacho ; “ and I’m afraid you fellows ain’t going 
to see it, either, in this neighborhood. Tell ’em 
we’ve got no tobacco for them, and if they don’t 
skip out soon we’ll send them a couple of leaden 
bullets to tie in their bolas, if they don’t find them 
too hot to handle.” 

The Indian did not budge. 

“ Are you going to get out or not ?” cried the 
major-domo, cocking his rifle. 

“ No shoot, amigo,” said the Indian, raising his 


ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS. 103 

hand in a deprecating manner ; “ no shoot ; will 
you let me have big chief? want to bury his body.” 

‘‘Well, hurr}^ up, then,” said the major-domo; 
“ but no, hold on, you stay where you are ; just 
wait a minute and I’ll make that handier for you — 
he’s not going to spy around our wagon if I can help 
it,” he whispered ; “ here, John, lend a hand, please ; 
let’s drag that old robber chieftain out where he 
can get it.” 

The three men swung the dead body across the 
saddlebags, and John noticed that their Indian vis- 
itor constantly kept his right hand at his belt, ready 
to pull his dirk-knife at a moment’s notice ; for all 
he knew the white man’s offer of assistance might 
be only a scheme to capture his horse. 

“ That's it ; get aAvay with you, now,” said the 
major-domo. 

The Indian stalked away, leading his horse, but 
had not gone fifty steps when he stopped and seemed 
to watcli some object on the northern horizon. 

“ What is he looking at, I wonder?” muttered the 
major-domo, who had returned to the wagon. “ Oh, 
there does seem to be something moving on that 
ridge of hills — what can that be, Don Sebastian ?” 
seeing the professor ranging his telescope. 

“ I don’t know — it looks like two men on horse- 
back,” said the professor, “and they do not seem to 
carry lances. There! They’re coming close to- 
gether, and one of them is standing up on his saddle 
now. Just look at those red rascals — they’ve seen 
them, too ; those chaps have eyes like pampa-hawks.” 


104 


ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS 


“Are those fellows on the hill wearing hats?” 
asked the major-domo. 

“ I think so ; but I am not sure. ITow they are 
both in the saddle again, and — there they go, due 
east, as fast as they can. Indians ? IIo ; they would 
have joined the others ; it must have been cowboys 
from one of the ranchos around here, and ” 

“ Yalgale Dios! ” muttered the old Guacho ; 
“ Heaven help, you are right ; it was cowboys from 
the Encinal, maybe, and they’re racing for Las 
Tunas now, to give the alarm.” 

“ They were looking straight this way, I’m sure 
of that,” said the professor ; “ and they didn’t need 
a field-glass to make out a big hulk of a wagon like 
ours.” 

“ Who knows, maybe our runaway Guachos have 
alarmed the neighborhood,” observed Mrs. Houston. 

“ They deserve to be hung and buried in a ditch if 
they didn’t,” said the major-domo; “only the trouble 
is they won’t find troopers nearer than Eio Hondo, 
more than thirty miles from here ; and the cowboys 
of our scattered farmsteads cannot always be relied 
upon.” 

“ Let’s hope for the best,” said Mrs. Houston, and 
then sank back upon her couch, folding her hands as 
if in silent prayer. 

“Look! The Indies have started a camp-fire,” 
said one of John’s schoolmates Avho had taken up 
the professor’s telescope. 

“They’re setting us a good example,” said the 
major-domo; “better let’s hurry up, too, and cook 


ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS. 


105 


dinner at once ; it would never do to light a fire 
after dark for the accommodation of those cut- 
throats. Come on, John, let’s get water from that 
pond, to begin with.” 

“ Better take your rifies along, if you do,” said 
the professor. 

The pond was not more than a stone’s throw from 
the wagon-camp ; but the water-committee had not 
yet reached the fringe of flag-reeds when three In- 
dian scouts leaped upon their ponies, and came 
galloping over the pampa. 

“Don Sebastian was right,” laughed the old 
Guacho; “I wish one of those dare-devils would 
come a little nearer.” 

But John had already put his pail down and 
brought his rifle to bear, and the three skirmishers 
came to a sudden stop. They had not yet forgotten 
the recent specimens of target-practice. 

“ There’s wood here, too, I declare,” chuckled the 
major-domo; “somebody has been camping here, 
before ; let’s take all that along, and have a good 
picnic-fire.” 

‘'‘Dios ! Do look at all those canned knick-knacks,” 
said he, when Mrs. Houston opened her provision- 
chests; “peas, beans, corn, berries, and what not; 
we’re not going to starve, anyhow.” 

“ Ho, not if we can live on vegetables,” said Mr. 
Houston’s sister ; “ we have a big bag full of navy- 
beans, besides, and a lot of dried apples. If only 
our meat does not give out — there’s a ten-pound bag 
of salt under that seat-board,” 


106 


ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS. 


“ Good ! Then we can salt some of this veal,” 
said the major-domo. 

“ Yes, and you can give me a handful to catch 
birds with,” chirped little Kosa ; “ I’ll sprinkle it on 
their tails, and we can fry them for supper.” 

“ Come this way, Don Sebastian,” said the major- 
domo when dinner was over; “I want to show you 
something on the other side of that pond.” 

“ What is it, Don Pedro ?” asked the professor, 
who every now and then consented to surrender the 
reins of command into the hands of the shrewd old 
Guacho ; “ tracks of game over there ?” 

‘‘ISTo, something better,” said the major-domo 
when they reached the brink of the lagoon ; “ do 
you notice that spit of land ?” pointing to a little 
peninsula that extended some forty yards toward 
the middle of the pond. “Yes, just as I thought; 
look at the ground, hard and dry, and would bear 
wheels of a wagon twice as big as ours ; good luck 
again !” 

“Good luck what?” 

“ Why, don’t you see ? As soon as it gets any- 
thing like dark we could push our wagon upon that 
point of land, and have the pond to protect us from 
three sides. They couldn’t come near us then 
without splashing through sticky mud a yard deep, 
or tackle us across this narrow trail, where we could 
hit them in the dark by mere guess.” 

“ Oh, I see, and turn that peninsula into a little 
Gibraltar ; the only question is if we won’t miss our 
way in the dark, pushing the wagon across; we 
might dump it in the pond, you know.” 


ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS. 


107 


“ Oh, I thought of that,” said the major-domo ; 
“ and that’s the reason I asked you to come over 
and take a good look at the ground ; we could draw 
a furrow with our heels, too, and find our way with- 
out lanterns.” 

Don Sebastian was pleased with the old fellow. 
“ You certainly keep your eyes open, amigo,” said 
he, with hearty approval ; “ of course, that would 
be an excellent plan; and I confess it would never 
have occurred to me if you hadn’t mentioned it. 
Yes, let’s move all the sticks and clods now ; and if 
the Indies watch us, they may imagine we are pick- 
ing up firewood. This must have been used for a 
camp more than once.” 

“ Water is pretty scarce in this part of the 
country,” said the old Guacho ; ‘‘ there are travelers 
that would go a dozen miles out of their way to 
reach a pond of that size at this time of the year; 
and we surely got ahead of our red friends, thus far. 
They must have a pretty dry time of it in their 
sand-hole, over yonder.” 

“ Shall we mark out our trail, right now ?” 

“ Yes, call over John to help us ; and as soon as 
ever we get done, order all your young fellows to 
turn in and try and get a few hours of good sleep. 
I hope I’m mistaken, but I’m much afraid we won’t 
get many chances for catnaps this night, Don 
Sebastian.” 

A light mist crept over the pampa at sunset, and 
half an hour after had shrouded the pond and the 
contiguous bottom-land for a thousand yards around. 


108 


ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS. 


‘‘ ITow’s our chance,” said the major-domo ; “ we 
have still light enough for our job, and they can’t 
possibly see us from half a mile away. Let’s go at it, 
then ; they will begin to sneak this way before the 
moon spoils their tricks.” 

At first it seemed as if the wagon could not be 
moved ten yards in as many hours ; but after they 
had once pulled the wheels out of the deep sand- 
ruts, they made better time and soon reached the 
approaches of the peninsula. Here the tug-of-war 
began in earnest. 

“ This way — steady ! Now a bit more to the 
right ; now push !” came the old Guacho’s orders in 
a hoarse whisper, while one or the other of his assist- 
ants crawled ahead to feel the ground with his 
hands. 

“All together, now; here comes a streak of 
sand,” said he, when they had pushed their citadel 
a dozen yards further. “ Keep it up, don’t stop 
now ; keep at it, boys — steady, now, that will do 
then stopping to shake his fist in the direction of 
the Indian camp, “ now we’re ready to serve them 
their rations of smoking-tobacco, confound their 
impudent souls; we’ll make it smoky for them if 
they try to fool with our wagon this night.” 


ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS. 


109 


CHAPTEE lY. 

Put your head a little lower down and listen, 
Frank,” said John Houston, when one of his school- 
mates had spread his blanket at his side; “don’t 
you hear something like the stamping of trotting 
horses ?” 

“ I did hear that awhile ago, but it sounded like 
something moving in that wagon,” said Frank; 
“ maybe it was the shaking of the boards when the 
wheels settled down in the ruts.” 

John Houston shook his head, and listened again ; 
but everything was still now, save the occasional 
buzzing of a pampa-beetle, or the whirring flight of 
a flock of ducks, hastening by on their nocturnal 
migration from river to river. 

“ Keep still, boys, and sleep all you can,” whis- 
pered Don Sebastian ; “the major-domo and I and 
Edward are going to take the first watch, but your 
turn will come at midnight. About three o’clock 
we’ll relieve you again, but that’s the riskiest hour 
in the twenty-four, and we may have to wake you 
any minute; so better make the best of your 
chance while it lasts.” 

An absolute, almost oppressive, silence brooded 
over the plain, but the mist began to gleam silvery 
and reveal twinkles of the rippled water here and 


110 


ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS. 


there ; the moon was up, and a cool night wind 
invited to rest and slumber. 

But John Houston had been right, after all. As 
soon as the last glimpses of twilight had faded, the 
Indian chief had ordered his men to advance, and 
halted them only at the edge, of the valley that 
sloped to the margin of the little lagoon. He could 
not see a trace of the camp-fire that had burned 
in a bright blaze only an hour ago, and stopped 
his men while a scout went ahead to reconnoiter. 

What could have become of that camp-fire? 
Had the wary palefaces extinguished it to lessen 
the risk from long-range arrows ? There could be 
no possible doubt about the direction ; the ground 
sloped steadily eastward, and that slope must lead 
to the pond and the camp, not more than a hundred 
yards from the water’s edge. Hearer and nearer 
crept the spy ; if his calculation was correct he 
must be within a cat’s jump of the wagon now, and 
the moon had cleared the mist enough to see at 
least a few steps ahead. The scout crept along 
like a serpent stealing upon a sleeping bird. Once, 
when a little pampa-owl flew up from its nest 
almost at his feet, he shrank back and crouched 
almost motionless for more than a minute to make 
sure that no other cause of alarm had made that 
bird rise. Crawling ahead again, his hand felt a 
depression — a long-drawn furrow, and, as he ex- 
pected, a parallel one about four feet to the left. 
A smile of triumph stole over his face ; yes, that 
must be the wagon track, and there could be no 


ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS. 


Ill 


trouble now in locating the white men’s camp. 
And here, too, were the ashes of that camp-fire ; he 
could feel their warmth ; and cautiously stirring 
them with a charred stick, he contrived to rake out 
a few live sparks. 

That fire, he remembered, had flickered within 
six 3^ards of the wagon all afternoon ; where, then, 
was the wagon itself? Could the travelers possibl}-" 
have smuggled off under cover of darkness, and 
avoided all the outposts ? Got away without 
horses ? ISTo, no ; wherever they were, they could 
not be far off, and again the scout crouched down 
to feel his way by following the continuation of the 
wagon tracks. 

Those tracks led to the pond, then along the 
edge of the reeds for awhile, and now to the right, 
toward the head of the little peninsula. Yes, 
there they were. Through the silvery night mist 
the scout could plainly see the outlines of the big 
coach, and his keen ear caught the sound of deep 
breathing. 

The professor had mounted guard between the 
wagon and a barricade of provision boxes, and had 
yielded far enough to the temptations of repose to 
sit down now and then, but whenever he caught 
himself nodding he rose again and conquered drow- 
siness by walking briskly up and down. 

But, with all the experience of his five campaigns, 
Don Sebastian was a novice in Indian warfare, and 
while the scout at his feet crouched like a panther, 
watching his chance for a spring, the old professor 


112 


ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS. 


stood still, resting his rifle on the ground, and 
listening for the voices of the night. Hearing no 
sound, he turned slowly back and would have been 
a dead man the next second if the scout had not 
been under positive orders to provoke no fight, but 
content himself with gathering all possible details 
of information, and give the garrison of the wagon- 
burg plenty of time to yield to the spells of 
slumber. 

The scout, indeed, had already drawn his knife, 
but now slipped it back under his belt and com- 
menced his retreat. The purpose of his mission had 
been accomplished. He had traced the travelers to 
their place of refuge; had ascertained the exact 
position of their wagon, and had seen enough to be 
sure that they had posted no competent sentries. 
Why, he could have stabbed that old man to the 
heart before any rescue had a ghost of a chance, 
and he felt half sorry now that he had not made 
the attempt, in defiance of orders. What harm 
could it have done to slay that solitary sentry and 
slip away before his companions had finished their 
pleasant naps ? 

Stopping, half irresolute, and almost inclined to 
try his luck single-handed, he heard the professor’s 
voice and the answering grunt of the major-domo ; 
there were two of them awake, now, and perhaps 
more. “Blame my luck; a good chance missed; 
won’t come back in a hurry,” thought the red war- 
rior ; and half rising to his feet, now hurried back 
to the rendezvous of his friends. The wild troopers 


ADVENTURES IN TEE PAMPAS. 


113 


crowded around him, and he gave them no cause 
for wasting time with inquiries. His report 
was brief and exact. The palefaces had changed 
their camp, probably to have the advantage of 
more convenient drinking water, and an attack on 
their wagon would now have the best chance of 
success from the south side. Their vigilance did 
not amount to much. Nothing but the strictness 
of his instructions had prevented him from cutting 
the throat of their only sentry. 

The chieftain had listened in silence. A cool 
east wind swept through the grass of the pampas, 
and swarms of water-birds passed overhead with the 
rush of many wings. Midnight must be past, and a 
good deal of work had to be done before morning. 
“ To horse,” ordered the chief. 

Did I fall asleep ?” asked the major-domo, rub- 
bing his eyes, when the professor’s hand touched his 
shoulder. 

‘‘ Never mind, now ; it’s all right,” said Don Se- 
bastian; “just help me wake those young fellows, 
and tell them to keep as quiet as they can.” 

“ Did you see anything, Don Sebastian ?” 

“I can’t swear to that; but I’m pretty sure I 
heard the snorting of a horse.” 

“ Cock your rifle, then,” said the major-domo, 
now suddenly wide-awake ; “ here, hold my gun till 
I get those youngsters on their feet. Say, Don 
Juan, can’t you wake up ?” 

“ Yes, yes,” cried John, starting up and reaching 
for his rifle ; “ are they coming ?” 


114 


ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS. 


“ Not yet,’’ whispered the major-domo ; “ but 
help me straighten out the rest of them ; get up, 
Frank ; wake up, Eddy ; morning isn’t far off, and 
there may been need of every man any minute.” 

“ Is there anything the matter, sir ?” asked Mrs. 
Houston, starting from one of the brief naps that 
had asserted the rights of nature in spite of her 
fearful excitement. 

“Not yet, madam,” answered the major-domo; 
“ and, please, keep quiet ; maybe all will be well if 
only morning comes on time ; but in case anything 
should happen, just stay where you are; those 
baskets will stop a bola if it should strike through 
the wagon-boards.” 

The riflemen took post left and right of the 
wagon, and the old Guacho, musket in hand, went 
cautiously forward to reconnoiter the approaches of 
their stronghold. Whispering voices seemed to 
come from the fringe of reeds, and the low cry of a 
whimpy owl was answered by a similar sound from 
the other shore of the lagoon. The major-domo 
listened, and stood motionless for nearly a minute, 
straining his eye to penetrate the veil of the mist 
that still hung about the shores of the little lake. 

“Are you a good shot, Don Carlos?” said he 
suddenly, grasping the arm of the young English- 
man, who had followed him from the wa^ron. 

“ As sure as this gun goes off,” said Charles con- 
fidently ; “ but what is ” 

“Keep still,” whispered the major-domo; “do 
you see that black shape on the ground there? 


ADVENTURES IN TRE PAMPAS, 


115 


Look — close to the water, I mean ; only a few steps 
to the left. ITow, watch, don’t you see it moving? 
There, you can see it quite plain, now.” 

“ Yes, I see it,” whispered Charles, feeling his 
heart beat as he had never felt it before. 

“ Take a good aim, then, and pull down on it ; 
hurry up, watch ; that thing is crawling back again.” 

Charles made no reply, but had already raised his 
rifle, trying hard to get it in range, though the front 
sight faded the moment he lowered the barrel. 
Kaising himself to his full height, he took one more 
glance at the retreating object, then aimed by guess 
and pulled the trigger. 

The crack of the rifle was deadened by the thick 
mist, but nevertheless roused the little garrison like 
an electric shock, and somehow every one of them 
felt that the next few minutes must decide their 
fate for life or death. 

“Watch out,” yelled the major-domo, “here they 
come !” And in that second the sound of galloping 
horses mingled with the warwhoop of the wild 
riders, and a volley of rifle-shots rang out, as four 
of the assailants plunged through the barricade and 
bit the dust almost at the edge of the wagon. 

“All to the right, here,” cried the professor; 
“ quick, John, grab that shotgun ; now wait till 
they come close — blaze away !” Again horses and 
riders went down together, and the riflemen loaded 
in wild haste, while the old Guacho danced about, 
ax in hand, and cracking the skulls of the wounded, 
left and right. 


116 


ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS, 


“ Ready again,” shrieked the professor in a voice 
that sounded like a yell of triumph; ‘‘blaze away, 
and let’s see how long the cursed cutthroats can 
stand it !” And for the third time all the assailants 
would have paid the penalty of their desperate ven- 
ture before they reached the wagon if one wild 
rider had not leaped the barricade, and knife in hand 
made an attempt to clamber through the next coach 
window. But only a second before Emile, the little 
French fire-eater, had entered the wagon from the 
other side to get his revolver. His chance had come ; 
and pushing the barrel close to the intruder’s ear he 
pulled the trigger, and, like a sack, the dead body 
plumped down on the provision boxes. 

Again and again single daredevils clambered over 
the barricade ; but in the meantime John, Charles, 
and the professor had reloaded their rifies, and the 
only blockade runner who reached the interior of 
the inclosure from the other side was knocked down 
with the butt-end of a musket and finished by the 
major-domo in trying to effect his retreat through 
the wagon-wheels. Everything was still for a mo- 
ment, only from the center of the pond came a 
splashing sound, as if one of the besiegers had tried 
to approach from the north side and his horse had 
got stuck in the deep mud. 

“ Here is a handful of dry caps for any one that 
needs them ; I kept them in my pocket all night,” 
said the little Frenchman, seeing a chance to become 
the hero of the hour; “and here is the knife I took 
from the red thief 1 shot in the wagon window.” 


ADYrnmnEs m tee pampas. 


117 


“ Isn’t it lucky we took you along ?” said the pro- 
fessor, slapping his shoulder ; “ yes, hand me one of 
those caps. I declare they gave us time to load 
again all round. Who has got a shotgun ready ?” 

“ I have,” said John ; “ I put in a good load, I tell 
you. If I only could get a glimpse of that rascal 
splashing around in the pond there !” 

“ You must be a mind-reader,” laughed the pro- 
fessor; “that’s just what I asked you for; step this 
way ; you can see his head every once in awhile, or 
else the head of his horse.” 

“By Joe! I do see him,” cried John; “wouldn’t 
he get a dose of blue beans for breakfast if this old 
gun don’t burst 1” 

“ Hold on a minute,” said the professor ; “ wait 
till you see that head again, and then aim about a 
foot lower ; that will plant all your beans where they 
will do most good. There ! d’ye see that again?” 

The shot rang out, and after a desperate splash in 
the middle of the pond, the sound of stamping hoofs 
seemed to retreat toward the opposite shore, and 
soon after could be heard crunching through the dry 
reeds. 

“ Call me a catfish if you didn’t really help that 
rascal out of his hole,” laughed the professor ; “ you 
made his horse put on steam, and the red scoundrel 
is safe ashore by this time.” 

“ Safe in , where he belongs, if that was his 

own head,” said elohn. “I’m used to aiming in 
moonlight ; we used to practice that turkey-hunting 
a good many times.” 


118 


ADVENTURES IN TEE PAMPAS. 


“ Then the mist must have spoiled your aim.” 

“I don’t care,” insisted John ; “mist or no mist, 
I pity the creature that owned the body under that 
head.” 

“Well, never mind; they are all gone, it seems,” 
said the professor ; “ all gone and none of us miss- 
ing. I hear little Eosa kittening around in the rear 
of that coach. But hold on — where’s the major- 
domo? ITot killed, I hope. Who has seen him 
last ?” 

“ Here I am, or what’s left of me,” said the old 
Guacho, crawling out from under the wagon- wheels ; 
“isn’t it near moruing yet? I thought I should 
never see daylight again when that red devil hit 
me.” 

“Hit you? Why, what happened? Are you 
hurt ?” 

“ That’s what you would call it if you could see 
my face,” said the old man ; “ that rascal I stabbed 
under the wagon turned back on me and came near 
cutting my head off. I justModged in time and 
caught it in the face. I wish daylight would come 
and I had a looking-glass ; this feels as if the front 
part of my head was cut half in two. And Carlos 
isn’t much better off; one of those cursed bolas 
smashed him in the shoulder, and he can’t lift his 
right arm now.” 

“ Why, I never knew that,” said the professor. 
“Is that so, Charley? Why didn’t you let me 
know ?” 

“Yes, they broke my shoulder-bone, I reckon. 


ADVENTURES IN TEE PAMPAS 


119 


but I don’t care,” said the brave young fellow; “I 
didn’t want to trouble you about trifles while you 
had such work on hand.” 

‘‘ Too bad, poor boy !” said Mrs. Houston ; “ let 
him have one of these shawls and sit down till 
morning comes. Will this night never end?” 

‘‘ I thought it must have lasted a couple of weeks 
two hours ago,” said the professor ; ‘‘ but it must be 
four o’clock now, at least. Yes, look over yonder; 
that’s something more than moonlight ; it will be 
light enough to read, in spite of that fog, in half an 
hour. Who else got hurt ?” 

‘‘ I did, but it don’t amount to a pin’s work,” said 
Emile ; “ one of those horses bruised my toes and I 
felt a little lame the first few minutes.” 

“And I bumped me knee,” whimpered little Eosa. 

“Well, let’s thank God we’re all alive yet,” said 
Mrs. Houston ; “ they are gone for good this time, 
are they not ?” 

“Don’t know, ma’am,” said the major-domo 
gloomily ; “ this is the very time of the morning 
you can look for mischief ; but they got all they 
could stand for breakfast, I hope. We must have 
killed a dozen of them, at least, besides the ones that 
got their hides riddled and managed to hold on to 
their horses.” 

Daylight had come at last, and the defenders of 
the little fort began to remove the dead bodies, 
every now and then casting anxious glances toward 
the rock-shore of the lagoon, where the mist still 
hovered in dense masses. 


120 


ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS. 


“ Yes, let me see that glass, please,” said the major- 
domo when Mr. Houston’s sister handed him a little 
pocket-mirror. ‘^Ave Maria jpurissima! How that 
copper-colored cutthroat carved me up! Oh, my 
face, my face! I don’t know if I ever can show 
myself on a public street again !” 

The memento of that night’s adventure had, 
indeed, disfigured him in a horrible manner, and the 
dying Indio had just barely missed cutting his 
throat, too, a deep gash extending from his right 
ear to his left cheek, and further down through 
beard and jaw-bone to the edge of his neck. 

“ I’ve to hide underground, I expect, till I’m fit 
to be seen again,” moaned the poor old fellow, “ or 
they — halloo! what’s this?” he interrupted himself; 
“ look out ! they are not done with us yet ! Just 
suppose that blamed thing had struck a foot lower!” 

An Indian arrow had knocked the splinters out 
of the wagon-board, only a few inches above the 
head of the young Englishman, who had sat down 
on a bundle of bags, nursing his swollen shoulder. 

“You better go inside, Don Carlos,” said the 
major-domo, with all the superstition of his race; 
“that means trouble for you if you don’t watck 
close. Two close calls mean ruin the next time.” 

“Those rascals beat us for eyesight,” said the 
professor, taking up a shotgun, and cautiously ad- 
vancing toward the probable standpoint of the 
hidden archer. Dim shadows did move through 
the fading mist in that direction, and, suddenly 
raising his gun, Don Sebastian fired both barrels in 


ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS. 


121 


quick succession, and perhaps not a second too soon. 
Another arrow came whizzing through the air a 
moment before he pulled the trigger; but then 
came a yell of pain from the shore of the pond, and 
they plainly heard the gallop of a fleeing horse. 

The mist Anally lifted, and the defenders of the 
wagonburg breathed freer when they got the first 
glimpse of their bafiled foes ; only twelve horsemen 
were halting on a low ridge about half a mile north 
of the lake, and two of them seemed to keep in the 
saddle only with the assistance of their companion, 
and were probabl^T- merely waiting for the sun to 
warm them a sick bed in the grass of a pampa 
ditch. 

‘‘ Yes, we must have got away with more than a 
dozen,” said the professor; ‘Hhere are nine dead 
bodies around this wagon, and perhaps as many in 
the deep grass further back.” 

“ There’s one, anyhow, right at the edge of that 
pond,” said the major-domo ; ‘‘ look, he just dropped 
with his head in the reeds, or had life enough left 
to drag himself up that far.” 

“That’s my Indian, then,” cried John; “don’t 
you remember where you asked me to aim, pro- 
fessor, and which way we heard that horse splash 
out of the pond ? I knew I couldn’t have missed 
him altogether, and if we get him out I’ll bet you 
that shotgun you’ll And him chock-full of buckshot.” 

“ Yes, they’ve got enough of us,” said the major- 
domo ; “ just watch them — they don’t look as if they 
were dressing to pay us a morning visit. And, I 


122 


ADV.ENTUMES IN THE PAMPAS. 


declare, there are those same two horsemen again — 
those fellows on the hill we saw yesterday morning!” 

“ More than two,” said the professor, watching 
the hill through his telescope ; “ there are three of 
them in front, and about four or five further back, 
a little to the left. I see them much better now, in 
this slanting light ; they’re looking this way again, 
but — Halloo, what’s that ? They have lances, or 
something like that ; they can’t be ” 

“ Indians, you mean ? Shouldn’t wonder,” growled 
the major-domo, whose swollen face had not im- 
proved his humor; “let me have that glass a 
moment. Can they be a part of that gang we had 
watching us from that camp-fire ?” he muttered ; 
“ they must have got more, then, in spite of all our 
shooting.” 

“What do you make out, Don Pedro?” asked 
John Houston. 

“ I don’t know,” said the major-domo ; “ my eyes 
feel sore, together with the rest of my face ; you’d 
better take a peep at them.” 

“Yes, they have lances,” said John; “but they 
cannot be our Indians. There’s at least a dozen 
now on that hill; maybe they belong to a different 
tribe, and don’t know if it will pay them to take a 
hand in this game.” 

“ If they are redskins at all our gang will soon 
let us know it ; there is no difference in the shade 
of their hides if it comes to carving up white man’s 
meat. Just see how they are watching that hill ; 
they’re half a mile nearer by and perhaps can beat 
our telescope at its own tricks.” 


ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS. 


123 


Two Indians of the midway troop now trotted a 
few hundred yards to the right, and then halted to 
watch the newcomers from the vantage-ground of 
a little knoll. 

‘‘ That hill is alive with horsemen now,” said 
John Houston. “ 1 can see two or three dozen with 
my bare eyes.” 

“ Hice news for breakfast, isn’t it,” growled the 
old Guacho ; “ how much powder have we left, Don 
Sebastian ?” 

Powder enough,” said the professor, “ but our 
stock of buckshot is getting pretty low, and you 
know how many single bullets miss when you shoot 
at a galloping target.” 

“Yes, and how many hits fail to save you when 
you have to fight such a gang. We’re in for it this 
time.” 

“ Oh, good heavens !” cried Mrs.. Houston ; “ do 
you mean to say that there is no hope at all ? 
Wouldn’t these newcomers have mercy on us, you 
think, if we ask them to spare our lives and let them 
have everything else ?” 

“ They and mercy!” sneered the old Guacho ; “ no, 
no, ma’m, they wouldn’t have spared our lives even 
if we had given them all we had the first morning; 
and now, after we’ve shot their best fighters down 
like dogs the rest won’t waste much time with 
parley, if they get help enough to ride us down.” 

Mrs. Houston burst out crying. “ Hever mind 
his talk, sefiora,” said the professor kindly ; “ we 
don’t know at all what is going to happen, and the 
worst of our trouble may be over by this time.’’ 


124 


ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS. 


“ We’ll be out of all trouble after they’ve got our 
hides on the stretcher, you ought to say,” growled 
the old man ; “ well, a person can’t die more than 
once, that’s one consolation, and ” — reaching for his 
musket — “ I’m going to take one or two of them 
along before I go.” 

“ There is surely a big force of men on that hill,” 
said Charles, who had mounted the wagon-roof in 
spite of his aching shoulder, ‘‘ twenty or thirty, at 
least, I should say.” 

“ Forty would be nearer the figure,” said the 
major-domo, “ but a few more or less don’t matter 
now. Don’t bother counting those red devils,” he 
added, taking a seat on a low box and pressing his 
hands against his swollen face. 

“ Yes, but they’re coming this way,” said Charles ; 
they’re forming in ranks, and I can see the scarf 
of their ofiicer, their leader, I should say.” 

‘‘ Ranks ? Scarf ? What do you mean ?” asked 
the old Guacho, suddenly kicking his box aside and 
almost wrenching the telescope out of the young 
man’s hands. “ Maybe they are not Indians, after 
all ?” he muttered by Avay of apology. 

One brief glance decided that question. 

‘‘ Soldiers ! Lancers ! Dragoons !” roared the 
major-domo leaping from his perch and dancing 
about, slapping his knees like a maniac. ‘‘ Soldiers, 
Mrs. Houston, d’ye hear me, soldiers, by all that’s 
holy and lucky ! Help coming, help coming ! and 
look here, Don Sebastian,” lowering his voice to a 
chuckle, haven’t those red thieves forgot all about 
their old friends ?” 


ADVENTURES IN TEE PAMPAS. 


125 


The midway troop of horsemen had faced about 
and trotted within five hundred yards of the camp, 
then stopped and turned, as if for a farewell glance 
at the portent on the hill. 

“Quick, Don Sebastian, you’re our best shot,” 
cried the major-domo; “take your best rifle and 
give those rascals a pill for good measure. It’s only 
a few hundred yards and it will help to let our 
dragoons know there’s somebody living in this 
rancho of ours, or they might gallop by and never 
notice us at all.” 

The Indians seemed inclined to stand their 
ground, and could be seen shading their eyes to 
scan the southeastern horizon. Were they looking 
for reinforcements ? The professor decided to assist 
their deliberations. Besting his rifle against the 
edge of the wagon roof he aimed about half a 
foot above the heads of the whole troop and touched 
the trigger. 

At the sound of the rifle-shot the soldiers pulled 
up short, but a glance at the big wagon sufficed to 
explain the situation. And the shot had, indeed, 
served a double purpose. One of the Indian ponies 
broke down, kicking about wildly in its death 
struggle, and in the next moment the savages scat- 
tered and galloped off madly in a southerly direc- 
tion. Their evident plan was to divide the pur- 
suers and then attack them one by one ; but the 
dragoons had fought Indians before, and declined to 
accommodate their red friends. Only a dozen horse- 
men turned to the right oblique in the direction of 


126 


ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS. 


the wagon ; the rest kept straight on, firing their 
carbines and giving the fugitives no chance to re- 
unite their stragglers. 

“ ]^o wonder Charley took those men for Indians,” 
said Mrs. Houston; ‘‘why, they carry lances; and 
some of them have turbans instead of hats.” 

“ That’s our Guacho militia, madam,” laughed 
the major-domo ; “ desperate scamps, some of them, 
but good fighters and up to all tricks on the pampas. 
I pity the Indian that gets his horse crippled when 
those fellows are on his track ; if he’s got a soul 
they have it inside out at the first charge. They 
had bolas first, like the Indians themselves, and 
and then got armed with carbines, but they still 
hold on to their lances.” 

“Hot all of them, it seems,” said John Houston ; 
“ look ! some in this next troop have no spears and 
no carbines either.” 

“ They must be citizens, then,” said the old 
Guacho ; “ maybe sportsmen from the coast towns 
that joined our boys to see a man hunt. Here 
they come.” 

“ Ya los trovemos ! We’ve found them !” shouted 
one of the strangers, swinging his hat. 

“Father, my father!” cried John Houston, clear- 
ing the barricade with a quick leap, and rushing 
forth to meet the rescuers. 

“Yes, my boy, and here’s Emile’s and Eddie’s 
fathers, too,” said Mr. Houston, as the riders 
leaped from their horses ; “ how are you all ? — say 
the word, boy — all alive yet, I trust to Heaven ?” 


ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS. 


127 


‘‘Alive, father, every one of us,” said John, cling- 
ing to his father’s neck ; “ I somehow knew you 
would find us, and that’s what 1 told mother this 
very morning.” 

“ Oh, papa, what fun you missed that you didn’t 
come a little sooner,” cried the young Frenchman, 
limping out of his cracker-fort ; “ since the day we 
speared that devil-fish near Montevideo no human 
beings ever had a better time !” 

“They made things lively for you, did they?” 
laughed Monsieur Armand ; “ but I don’t think your 
ladies object to a change of programme?” 

“Ko, indeed,” said Mr. Houston’s sister; “ but per- 
haps we might consent to one repetition of the per- 
formance if that could give you a chance to witness 
the conduct of those brave boys.” 

Mrs. Houston did not say a word, but hung sob- 
bing in her husband’s arms. 

“All’s well that ends well,” said Mr. Houston; 
“ but after this, don’t let anybody tell me that the 
days of miracles are past. How the wonder did you 
keep that army of cutthroats from exterminating 
you the first day ?” 

“We came much nearer exterminating their 
gang,” laughed Emile; “ask the professor if we 
didn’t kill more than half of them.” 

“ That’s so,” said Don Sebastian, “ and my friend 
Emile shot one of them with his own hand — put a 
pistol to his ear just as he was clambering in the 
omnibus to butcher the ladies.” 

“ Killed more than one-half !” shouted Mr. Hous- 


128 


ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS. 


ton; “why, you must have had torpedoes and 
Gatling guns along, as well as pistols ?” 

“Yes, and even the remaining half would have 
been enough to eat you up, horses and all,” said 
Monsieur Armand; “they say there were nearly 
two hundred warriors in that first band.” 

“ What band ?” 

“ Why, Cabo Cayuga’s gang, that crossed the Kio 
Hondo last Tuesday, ” said Mr. Houston. “ They 
were seen at the Encinal and again at Las Tunas, 
and that’s what brought us up here — to give you a 
decent burial, if we couldn t do any better.” 

“ And from what they told us on the river, we 
made sure you must have crossed their trail,” added 
Mr. Armand. 

“You left Mendoza Monday morning, didn’t 
you ?” 

“ Yes, sir ; according to agreement.” 

“Well, that ought to have brought you to the 
Encinal the next forenoon — just about the time 
that horde passed.” 

“ Then that earthquake saved our lives,” said the 
professor; “ we waited five hours for refugees from 
Casa Blanca, and if it hadn’t been for that delay 
^ve Avould have reached the Encinal on time — in 
time to have our throats cut, I mean. Talk about 
bad winds blowing good for somebody or other, 
but this may be the first time an earthquake was of 
any earthly use.” 

“ I don’t know,” laughed Mr. Armand ; “ I heard 
of a volcanic convulsion splitting a hill in Peru and 
revealing a lot of buried treasure.” 


ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS. 


129 


“ "Well, this time it helped us by spoiling a reve- 
lation,” laughed the professor ; “ it would have been 
a treat for Don Cayugas’ cavaliers to get a glimpse 
of our omnibus. The last of their scouts must have 
passed in the night before we reached the ford.” 

“ Perhaps our gang was the rear guard of that 
army,” said John. 

“ That’s more than likely, gentlemen,” said the 
major-domo, “and that would explain one thing 
that puzzled us all.” 

“ Halloo ! what happened, comjpanero ?” said Mr. 
Houston, noticing the last speaker’s bandaged face, 
and the marks of blood on his shirt ; “ did you get 
seriously hurt ?” 

“Just a rip,” said the old Guacho, “but it might 
have been serious enough if it hit me a little lower.” 

“ Good! we brought a physician along, anyhow,” 
said Mr. Houston ; “ he followed the troopers, but 
will be here as soon as they get back. I’m sorry I 
signaled him all was right hereabouts. And what 
did you refer to, sir, about the explanation of a 
puzzle ?” 

“ Oh, yes ; about that last gang of Indians,” said 
the old Guacho ; “ it seemed a riddle what made 
them hang back so long when they saw your 
lancers charge down on them ; they could not pos- 
sibly have had any idea of fighting your men and 
ours both without getting cut into shoestrings, but 
maybe they had kept up communication with Cay- 
uga’s crowd and were looking for reinforcements 
every minute.” 


130 


ADVENTURES IN TJSE PAMPAS. 


“Yes; do you remember how they kept spying 
toward the south?” said John Houston; “maybe 
they hung back to lead your troopers into an 
ambuscade.” 

“Not by the way they scattered,” said the old 
Guacho. “ No, they acted at last as if they had 
found out their mistake in waiting so long and 
passed the word for save who can.” 

“ Look at those Indian ponies,” said Emile. 
“ Couldn’t we catch a few of them to help us pull 
our wagon out ?” 

“ That’s a good idea,” said Mr. Houston ; “ has one 
of you gentlemen a lariat handy?” 

“Yes, here’s a couple of them,” said the major- 
domo ; “ but we will hardly need them. Indian 
ponies are not near as shy as our mustangs ; the 
redskins have sense enough always to feed them 
when they fetch them home ; they say there are 
herbs that a horse likes better than oats, but 
bread will do after a night like this. Let’s try 
our luck, anyhow.” 

John Houston went along for the fun of the 
thing, and was surprised to see the shaggy -looking 
brutes verify the prediction of the old Guacho. At 
sight of the strangers they first snorted and stamped 
the ground, but getting a sniff of the peace offer- 
ings they stood still, expectant, and one by one 
permitted themselves to be caught. 

“Will these four do?” asked Mr. Armand. 

“ Yes ; as far as the next relay station, anyhow,” 
said the major-domo; “and besides, that little bob- 


ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS. 


131 


tail standing over yonder must have been shot, I 
think, or he wouldn’t miss a chance like this for 
grazing, and that roan on the hill there isn’t a pony 
at all ; it’s some wild broncho the redskins picked up 
for luck and might kick the tops of our heads oif be- 
fore we can break him in.” 

“ And while Ave are about it, hadn’t we better 
take some of these Indian Aveapons for trophies ?” 
suggested Mr. Armand ; “ they Avould make nice 
keepsakes of Emile’s lively times, to hang over a 
mantelshelf.” 

“ That’s the law of the land,” said Mr. Houston, 
‘‘ highway robbers have no right to be buried in 
their panoply of arms. Let’s get some of their 
poniards and bolas, by all means.” 

“Oh, Don Juan, come this way,” the old Guacho 
called out, after the gathering of spoils had been 
going on for some time; “do you know the top 
piece of this Indian lance ?” 

“Well, I declare, if that isn’t the same broken-off 
bayonet Ave saAv tAvice before,” cried John Houston ; 
“ and — there ! I thought so ” — turning over the 
dead Indio’s body; “that’s the same man, too. I 
know him by the Avay his topknot is pulled doAvn 
over his forehead — the same red rascal that nodded 
to us on the road, like Avishing us a pleasant jour- 
ney, and then went and betrayed us. We paid him 
off at last, didn’t Ave !” 

“Would have been cheaper to settle his account 
the first morning,” said the old Guacho dryly. 
“Don Juan, do you remember Avhat I told your 


AD V£JJsrTunE8 IN THE PaMPaB. 


132 


professor, and the way he answered me? Who was 
right, now ? One shot in time would have saved 
ninety-nine, besides saving our horses, and saving 
me the trouble to plaster my old figurehead every 
morning these next four weeks.’' 

With such ropes and lariats as they could find in 
their wagon or collect from their fallen foes, the 
travelers contrived to harness their ponies and pull 
out of their lake-shore bivouac. 


ADVENTURES IN TUE PAMPAS. 


133 


CHAPTEE Y. 

“ It’s past ten o’clock,” said Mr. Houston, when 
the big coach had been dragged back to the edge of 
the overland trail ; there must be something 
Avrong, or the troopers have missed their road ; 
their plan was to chase your red visitors about a 
couple of miles and come back to escort us as far as 
Palancas.” 

“ Let’s wait, then, and while away time hunting,” 
said Emile ; ‘‘ there are lots of pampa-chickens in 
those brier-patches.” 

“ Yes, but the trouble is we have to catch the 
steamer,” said Mr. Houston ; if we miss her we’ll 
have to camp three days in the river-swamps and get 
eaten up with mosquitoes and sand-fleas. There 
isn’t as much as a bakery at Palancas ; nothing but 
tumble-down liquor-shops and one lodging-house 
where they don’t change their bedclothing oftener 
than once in five years.” 

“ Yes, I know that den,” laughed the professor; 
“ I would sooner live the last twenty-four hours over 
again than pass another night in that rat-warren.” 

“ Let’s pull out, then,” said Mr. Houston, after 
another look at his watch ; “ our friends on the war- 
path cannot miss us anyhoAV ; if they should come 


134 


ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS. 


back to this pond they will have brains enough to 
find us by following our wagon- tracks.” 

The major-domo had not said a word since the 
wagon left the lagoon, but mounted the driver’s box 
every now and then to get a better look of the 
southern horizon. 

“ Cahalleros^'* said he at last, did I understand 
you to say that those dragoons had agreed to join 
us after chasing the cutthroats a couple of miles ?” 

“ Yes, that was their plan,” said Mr. Houston ; 
“ I told their ofiicer there were ladies in this omni- 
bus, and he promised to see us safe to Palancas by 
five o’clock this afternoon.” 

“ Then the chase is going the wrong way,” mut- 
tered the old Guacho. 

“ Our troopers got in trouble, you mean ?” 

“ I don’t know,” said the old man ; but they cer- 
tainly had time to chase those devils a dozen miles 
and be back before this.” 

The ponies had started at a trot, and to lighten 
their load John and Emile had got on horseback 
with their fathers, and Eddie’s father had loaded 
his horse with a portion of the luggage. Eddie had 
complained of a pain in his side that morning, and 
Charley Kemper was crouching in a corner of the 
omnibus, trying what he could to keep down the 
swelling of his broken arm. 

‘‘ Hever mind, boys, we’ll be in Keynosa by noon,” 
said the major-domo ; “ they can sell us a dollar’s 
worth of cotton on the Eana ranch, and I’ll rig you 
out a seat as comfortable as a feather-bed. And the 


ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS. 


135 


rest of the way we’ll make better time, too ; there 
are alwaj^s horses enough at the station to relay a 
team like ours.” 

“ Poor old fellow, he’s doing all he can to make 
himself useful now,” Mrs. Houston whispered to 
her sister-in-law. “We could do without him after 
we reach the river, but, of course, we’ll take him 
along to the city and show him the sights. Pnilip 
says he’s going to pay him fifty dollars extra for his 
cut face.” 

“ Look at all those ducks,” cried Emile ; “ we 
can’t be far from the landing, now.” 

“ They’re flitting about the lagoons, I suppose,” 
said Mr. Armand ; “ you will see bigger birds than 
that before night, herons and pelicans and rabiata 
gulls.” 

They had reached the reed plain that slopes from 
the central plateau of the pampas to the shores of 
the great river — the Parana — which brings down 
the drainage of two hundred thousand square miles, 
and, after its junction with the Uruguay, assumes 
the form of a broad estuary, like the Susquehanna 
widening out into Delaware Bay. 

The travelers had a bit of lunch at Eeynosa, and 
after procuring a new team the major-domo picked 
up a couple of sacks and went to a neighboring 
farmstead for an armful of cotton. Ten minutes 
after he returned at a trot on an extra horse. 

“Say, Mr. Houston, your boy may have been 
right, after all,” said he, when he dismounted at the 
porch of the rustic restaurant; “those men at 


136 


ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS, 


the rancho tell me they heard rifle shots and a sound 
like a yell of many voices, half an hour ago ; perhaps 
our dragoons did stumble in an ambush.” 

“ I hope not,” said Mr. Houston ; “ maybe they 
are just having a skirmish with that same gang they 
chased this morning.” 

“ They would cut them to pieces in a minute,” said 
the old Guacho ; “ no, I’m afraid they started bigger 
game than they bargained for. And there is some- 
thing else : Do you notice that white cloud [in the 
south there ? Step this way, please ; you can see it 
quite plain here ; that’s a pampa-flre, and coming 
this way; somebody up there set the brushwood 
afire.” 

“Dear me, what is the matter ?” asked Mrs. Hous- 
ton ; “ I’d hoped we were out of all trouble ; some- 
thing wrong again, is there ?” 

“ Ho, no,” said her husband, “ nothing serious, I 
trust ; and at all events we are almost in reach of 
the river now ; only ten more miles to the landing. 
Our friend here is talking about the troopers you 
saw this morning; they seem to be still keeping up 
a running fight with those Indians, and it is just 
possible that they are getting the worst of it.” 

“ Here — see those fellows coming at a run from 
the rancho !” cried the major-domo ; “ they’re bring- 
ing news of some kind ; they found out something 
else by this time.” 

“ There are ten or twelve of your dragoons com- 
ing down the trail as fast as they can go,” reported 
the herders; “better get out of this, gentlemen; 


ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS. 


137 


there’s no saying what’s chasing those fellows. We 
ranchers about here can give them the slip in a 
minute, but a big wagon like yours ” 

“That’s so,” cried the major-domo; “all aboard, 
then, and five dollars apiece for any men who will 
help us take these Indian ponies along, because we 
can’t tell what might happen and what desperate 
fix an extra team might pull us out of.” 

“Hold on, then, one minute,” said one of the 
herders ; “ I’ll go for one, and I know another fel- 
low who would like to come along. Pablo here is 
Don Yegro’s hired hand, and can’t leave at short 
notice.” 

“ Yes, here come our dragoons,” said Mr. Hous- 
ton, “and that’s Dr. Rochez, the physician I was 
telling you about this morning ; he’s kept his word, 
after all.” 

“ Good luck you found horses !” cried the doctor, 
pulling rein at the head of a small troop of lancers, 
covered with sweat and dust ; “ there’s a couple of 
hundred Indians south of here, and they chased our 
men toward Las Tunas. Captain Bias let me have 
this dozen to try my luck running the blockade and 
give your people warning.” 

“ Bravo ! and you did manage it,” said Mr. Hous- 
ton, shaking hands with his friend. “ You came by 
way of that camp at the lagoon, I suppose ?” 

“Yes,” said the doctor, “and it took a weight off 
my soul to find you had started in time. You put 
those Indian ponies to good use, I see.” 

“And they might be needed another ten miles,” 


138 ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS. 

said Mr. Houston ; “ are they on our track 

again 

“We are not sure about that,” said the doctor; 
“ as soon as we got a mile’s start this way we jumped 
off and set the grass afire ; but they might trail us in 
spite of the smoke if they have that other gang for 
guides.” 

“ Then all depends on reaching that steamer in 
time,” said Mr. Houston. 

“There’s a telegraph station here, isn’t there?” 
asked the doctor. 

“ Yes, a station, and the operator always loafing 
when you need him ; but our friend, Mr. Armand, 
here, knows something about telegraphing, and we 
could send a message to Palancas this minute and 
then start at the best gallop the market affords.” 

“ Good !” said Monsieur Armand ; “ let’s see ; how 
shall we word it? ‘Eefugees coming; matter of 
life or death; don’t leave before we reach the 
landing.’ Would that do?” 

“ Excellent,” said Mr. Houston; “and ask them 
to wire reply to Pescadero — that’s the name of the 
midway station between here and Palancas.” 

“Yery well,” said the versatile Frenchman, and 
haltered his horse at the door of the little telegraph 
station. 

“ That’s all right,” said he when he came back a 
few minutes after; “they’ve got our message; I 
addressed it to the captain of the steamer Fortuna. 
Everything ready now, isn’t it? I see you got 
outriders for your Indian ponies.” 


ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS 


139 


“Forward, then,” ordered the doctor, and the 
twelve lancers started at a gallop, closely followed 
by the rattling coach. 

• “ Oh, if we could only see the river,” said Mrs. 
Houston, who was in a state of dreadful excitement 
again ; “ suppose we should miss our way, or that 
message should come too late, and no steamer there 
when we reach the landing.” 

“Ho danger of that, ma’am,” said the major- 
domo ; “ we couldn’t miss the trail in night-time, 
and there’s no doubt we’ll reach Palancas long 
before six o’clock ; that’s the time the boat leaves, I 
understand.” 

But the old Guacho had his own fears, and the 
next time one of the outriders approached the 
coach he beckoned him to stop, and, leaping from 
his seat, mounted one of the led horses. 

“What’s the best news, Josie?” he asked the 
outrider. 

“ That prairie fire is brewing a lot of smoke,” said 
the herder ; “ that’s about the best I can say ; but 
one of those dragoons told me those red devils will 
be after us sure ; he saw them stop and point this 
way when the troopers divided.” 

“ Halloo ! they’ve seen something, too,” he added 
a minute later. 

The vanguard of the cavalcade had reached a 
ridge of rising ground, and, after pulling up to scan 
the southwestern hillocks, broke into a sharper gal- 
lop than before and motioned back for the drivers 
to mend their pace. 


140 


AI) VEJSrTUMES IJV TEE PAMPAS. 


“ There they come,” said the herder, when he 
reached the same lookout point; “d’ye see that 
gray cloud streaming down the hill a little to the 
left of those willows ? That’s no fire-smoke, that’s 
dust, and a big flock of it, too. It takes a good 
many hoofs to turn the pampa gray for a stretch of 
ground like that.” 

The old Guacho rose in his saddle to get a better 
view of the phenomenon. “ Eight miles back, at 
least,” he chuckled ; “ we’ll beat them this race, I 
reckon, if nothing happens.” 

“ If your folks have only sense enough not to fool 
away any time at Pescadero,” said the herder ; “ after 
that we have only five miles left, and downhill 
every step of it. Hope the}^ will not stop to wait 
for that telegraph business.” 

“ Emile’s father has attended to that already, I 
think,” said the major-domo; “that French gentle- 
man that sent the message, I mean; he’s got the 
best horse in our troop, and I saw him put his boy 
up with the doctor awhile ago and gallop ahead 
alone. He’s in Pescadero by this time, I bet.” 

The willow-trees of Keynosa now intercepted the 
view of the distant hills, but something very much 
like a cloud of soaring dust could be seen spreading 
over the plain nearer by, and two ranchers darted 
out of the coppice, galloping eastward as if the Wild 
Huntsman were at their heels. 

“ You could hear the tramp of Cayuga’s ponies 
now if you were a mile back and had your ear on 
the ground,” whispered the outrider. 


ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS. 


141 


‘‘Four miles, you mean,” said the major-domo; 
“they are not so all-devilish close by as all that, 
and we are making pretty good time, too ; look ! 
there’s the Pescadero grist-mill, and — didn’t I tell 
you? Here comes that Frenchman that sent the 
message ; coming back with a reply, I expect.” 

“All’s well, so far, ladies,” said Mr. Armand, 
pulling rein at the side of the coach ; “ here’s Cap- 
tain Merrill’s reply from Palancas : ‘ All right, come 
on; we’ll wait for you.’ He’s the captain of the 
Fortuna, and we’ll see the smoke of his steamer in 
half an hour.” 

“ Thank you a thousand times,” said Mrs. Hous- 
ton; but as soon as the messenger had galloped 
ahead again she sank back, wringing her hands, to 
master her anguish. “Still another half-hour!” 
she groaned ; “ it will seem an age, I know, and the 
Indians may see us before that.” 

“ I don’t care,” cried little Kosa ; “ I’ll scratch out 
their eyes if they come again !” 

The alarm had spread, and as the escort came 
galloping over the trestle-bridge of Pescadero they 
were joined by several refugees that claimed to 
have seen the glitter of Indian lances from their 
housetops and heard the whoops of the oncoming 
savages. 

“ Stop one minute,” ordered Mr. Houston, when 
the omnibus reached the bridge; “ unhitch the lead- 
ers and put these post-horses in their place ; they are 
better used to galloping and we’ll be in Palancas 
before we start the sweat on their hides.” 


142 


ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS, 


The operation was performed by the simple act 
of unhooking a chain that connected the home-made 
harness with the wagon-gear, and coastward once 
more thundered the big omnibus, tearing through 
clods and reeds at a rate that would have demol- 
ished nine out of ten fashionable vehicles. 

“ One mile more and we’ll strike the Prado pike- 
road,” shouted the herder, a young fellow who 
seemed to enjoy the wild rush for life like a good 
horse-race ; “ they say an Indian pony never 

stumbles, but on that pike it will be a race on fair 
terms.” 

The people of Palancas, too, had been set agog 
by Mr. Armand’s telegram, and crowded the top of 
their local observatory, a dilapidated old windmill 
that served the occasional purpose of a lighthouse. 
Half a mile east of Pescadero one of their messen- 
gers met the vanguard riders, whooping and swing- 
ing his hat as soon as he caught a glimpse of the 
big coach. 

“ Keep it up! Adelante! Keep at it, men,” he 
shouted between his whoops; “keep at it, and 
you’ll beat them as sure as the sun’s on the sk}^ ! 
Gang-planks and everything ready ; we can hustle 
you all aboard in less than three minutes, and the 
Indies must have good spurs if they don’t give us 
time to save your baggage, too.” 

“ Here’s the Prado pike-road now,” yelled the 
outrider; “fair track and no favor, now; we can 
finish the rest of this race without our patron 
saints.” 


ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS. 


143 


“ They’ve reached Reynosa, by heavens,” said the 
major-domo at the next bend of the road; “look 
back there — d’ye see that whirl of dust around the 
old willow-trees ? That’s where we took lunch forty 
minutes ago ; this may be a closer race than we 
expected, amigos. 

“All the better,” laughed the wild herder; “I 
want them to come close enough to see what they 
might have caught, and then miss the last shred of 
it, after all. We’!! beat them as sure as your old 
rattletrap doesn’t break down, and even then we 
might have time to pack-saddle things and keep a 
good jump of our start !” 

“For mercy’s sake, isn’t Palancas in sight yet?” 
asked Mrs. Houston, looking out of a coach-window. 

“ Yes, almost in shouting distance, now, ma’am,” 
said the major-domo; “we’re over all trouble; 
struck the Prado pike-road — don’t you notice that 
the bumping don’t amount to much now ?” 

“ And are you sure all danger is past ?” 

“Don Pedro,” said the old professor, who had 
kept his peace all along or had actually enjoyed an 
after-dinner nap, “ say, Don Pedro, how fast can 
Indian ponies go^ you think, with nothing but red- 
skins and their lances atop ?” 

“ About twenty miles an hour, in dry weather, I 
should think,” said the old Guacho. 

“Twenty miles? And how far is Palancas, you 
say ?” 

“We’re almost there now, Don Sebastian — a mile, 
or a mile and a quarter.” 


144 


ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS, 


“ And Eeynoso 

“ Eight or nine miles back.” 

“Nine — one — twenty? That’s all right, then,” 
said the professor, after a pause of mathematical 
reflection ; “ don’t fret, Mrs. Houston ; you are safe. 
I’m almost sure of that ; the only question might be 
about our baggage, or, say, a part of our baggage. 
How’s my good boy Charley getting on ?” 

“ I couldn’t do much fighting for you this time,” 
laughed the invalid ; “ look at my arm, professor ; 
do you think they will have to cut it off ? It’s my 
right arm, and I can’t move it, hardly.” 

“ I won’t let them, Charley,” said the professor, 
patting his pupil’s head ; “ I’m an old soldier, you 
know, and have seen young fellows like you get 
over ’worse scrapes than that. It’s just your shoul- 
der; but no bullet to cause inflammation, and no 
bone splinters or deep cuts. You’ll be all right 
before the end of this week, and if the sawbones 
should tackle you I’ll be around to help you a bit.” 

“No wonder the boys worship that man,” v^his- 
pered Mr. Houston’s sister; “I never saw anybody 
to equal his talent for getting along with young 
folks, rain or shine ; they would follow him if he 
should move his college to the top of the Andes.” 

“ Palancas !” shouted the outrider, “ here we are, 
and, by Joe! they’ve got their steamer ready for us 
to start out.” 

“ Keep cool now ; help out the ladies the first 
thing,” ordered I)r. Eochez, an old campaigner who 
had faced death in more than one form ; “ swing 


ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS. 


145 


that coach around a bit more — steady ! That will 
do now ; help out the ladies and children first.” 

At his stern command the troopers dismounted, 
swung back their carbines, and fell into line at both 
sides of the gangplank, while passengers and bag- 
gage were hurried across without a single mishap, 
till one of the deckhands slipped with a box that 
came to pieces in his hands, having been splintered 
in one of the nocturnal cavalry charges. 

“ITever mind that; nothing but canned stuff,” 
said the doctor. “ Quick ! Get out those trunks 
now, and those bundles of shawls and blankets.” 

“ I’ve posted a lookout, friend,” said he when Mr. 
Armand urged an instant departure ; “ get all the 
horses across now, and pull the cushions out of that 
wagon.” 

“There’s a boxful of things coming from the 
lodging-house yet,” said the mate ; “ we’ve got a 
ton of their stuff aboard already.” 

“ Send them word, then, to hurry up,” said the 
doctor. 

A minute after the innkeeper’s children lugged 
an overloaded wheelbarrow down the steep landing, 
and to preclude the risk of delays the troopers, with 
the doctor’s permission, broke ranks and carried 
over the cargo of miscellanies by armfuls. 

“ Here they come !” shouted the outpost ; “ a 
hundred of them or more tearing down the Prado 
pike-road.” 

“All aboard !” yelled the mate. “ Confound it ! 
snatch up those kids and bundle them across, or 


146 


ADVENTURES IN THE PAMPAS. 


they’ll fool away an hour lugging up grease pots 
and torn blankets.” 

“ Novv our rearguard — hurry up ! All safe now,” 
shouted the doctor, crossing the plank the last man. 

“ Swing off that tow ; in with the plank !” cried 
Captain Merrill, assuming command; “push off, 
now, all hands together !” 

A minute later Cabo Cayuga’s vanguard came 
down the road at a reckless gallop, but a volley of 
carbine shots made them recoil in dismay, and with 
the triumphant shouts of a hundred voices the 
Fortuna steamed down the broad river. 


THE END. 


THE CONVENT TREASURE. 


BY 

FREDERICK GERSTAECHER, 

Author of '■'‘Pred Wildman's Adventures,"" '^Adventures in the Pampas," 
"Cruises in a Summer Sea," etc., etc. 


TRANSLATED BY 

FELIX L. OSWALD. 



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THE CONVENT TREASURE. 


CHAPTER 1. 

Fab up in the mountains of Venezuela the little 
mining village of Marquesas nestles in a grove of 
live-oak trees and Sierra pines that seem to whisper 
of bygone days, when the tower of the old mission 
church almost reached up to their summit branches, 
and the surrounding fields gleamed golden with 
ripening grain. 

The mission is in ruins now, and the traveler who 
led his horse up the steep bridle-path from San 
Pablo could only now and then see a trace of the 
rail fence that once inclosed the convent farm, but 
had now almost vanished in the thickets of wildering 
brambles. 

“ Is that what they call good farming lands ?’’ he 
asked, turning to his companion, the old Caracas 
mail-carrier. 

“ You will see better land down on the river, 
senor,” said the old man ; and in Cardenas they 
raise as pretty corn crops as anywhere in the 
mountains.” 

“ I’m glad to hear it,” said the stranger ; that’s 


150 


THE CONVENT TREASURE. 


where I am going, then ; this next neighborhood 
would never do. How the wonder did that old 
shopkeeper — what’s his name ? — ever come to settle 
in a weed-patch like this 

“ Don Eamon Holgar, you mean ? Oh, he bought 
the place very cheap,” said the mail-carrier ; ‘‘ the old 
convent was ruined in the time of the revolution, 
you know, and when the friars took ship for Spain 
the new government sold their lands to the highest 
bidder, and Don Eamon bought two houses and the 
remains of the convent for three hundred dollars. 
They might as well have given it to him for a 
present.” 

“Yes, but how does he make a living up here? 
Or does he run a ghost show in that old monastery?” 

“Ho, he keeps shop and a sort of restaurant,” 
laughed the mail-carrier. “ His chickens have the 
convent for a roosting place, and the youngsters use 
it for a playground in rainy weather. And besides, 
he owns that gristmill you saw on the other side of 
this hill; that’s what he advertised for sale. You 
can find him home at this time of the day.” 

“ Ho, indeed,” said the stranger ; “ I’m going 
right on to Cardenas ; this neighborhood looks too 
parched to suit me.” 

They had reached the plaza of the little village 
by that time, and after watering his horse at an old 
stone trough the stranger remounted and trotted 
away in the direction of Cardenas. 

The mail-carrier haltered his horse at the porch 
of the shopkeeper. “Well, Joe, my boy, you have 


THE CONVENT TnEASUHE. 


161 


your wish,” said he, patting the head of a bright- 
eyed youngster ; “ that gentleman from San Pablo 
isn’t going to buy your gristmill, anyhow ; so you 
won’t lose your playground. Is your father home ?” 

“ Here I am ; march in, Pancho,” came a voice 
from the inside of the shop, which also served the 
purpose of the village post office. Joe darted off in 
the direction of the woods. “ Good you waited, 
Chico,” said he, when he caught sight of a ragged 
lad crouching at the edge of a rock-sheltered spring ; 
“ Don Pancho tells me the fellow who answered our 
advertisement has changed his mind, or something ; 
anyhow, he isn’t going to buy that mill ; so ycu 
won’t lose your good old night-shelter.” 

“ I’ll give you my prettiest rabbit for that good 
news,” said Master Chico. 

“ Yes, but there’s something else,” stammered 
Joe ; “I hate to tell you. Buddy, but my father says 
times are so hard that he is going to leave if he 
can’t sell that mill. The shop hardly pays for the 
taxes they charge him, and unless he can raise a little 
money, or something happens to help us, he is going 
to let them sell all our property at auction and go 
off to the seacoast.” 

“ To the sea ?” mused Chico. “ Oh, Joe, do ask 
him to take me along, if you go. I’ve always 
wanted to see the ocean and pick up seashells, and 
— I would get away from that horrible old woman 
for good, maybe, somewhere so far that she can 
never find me.” 

Joe had squatted at his playmate’s side and sat 


152 


THE CONVENT TREASURE. 


poking the bright pebbles in the spring, but made 
no reply. 

“If you could only take me along or let me 
know where you are going,’’ resumed Chico, “I 
wouldn’t ask you to support me ; in a place like La 
Guayra I could earn money enough to buy me one 
loaf of bread a day, I know, and that’s all I would 
ask till I grow bigger and have a chance to look 
around for better wages. But — but ” — with a gulp 
or two — “ if you leave me here all alone, it would 
kill me, Joe” — suddenly clutching his playmate’s 
arm and sobbing in a way that brought Joe’s other 
arm around his neck. 

“ Don’t, Bud, don’t,” said Joe kindly, “or you make 
me cry, too, the first thing you know ; maybe my 
father will let you come along ; he could go over to 
your ranch and see your grandmother about it.” 

“ No, no, she’d kill me first before she lets me go ; 
she told me that more than once,” whispered Chico ; 
“ and one day she did try to break my head, I do 
believe; she isn’t my grandmother at all; just 
picked me up in war-time, when the whites had to 
leave, and now wants to keep me working for 
nothing. The only way I can get away from her 
once in awhile is to go out hunting wild turkey 
eggs and sleep at your gristmill. She thinks I’m 
camping in the woods and she wouldn’t care if the 
mosquitoes were biting a part of my soul away.” 

“ But wouldn’t she follow us and try to get you 
back ?” 

“ She can’t, I’d dare her to try it,” said Chico ; 


THE CONVENT TREASURE. 


153 


“ only here Pm afraid to spite her ; she would send 
for old Carcoxo, the chief of their tribe on the Kio 
Yerde ; he would kill me as quick as he would knock 
a rabbit in the head, and I believe he knows who 
were my father and mother.” 

“ I’m sure you are a white boy,” said Joe ; “you 
don’t look a bit like any Indian I ever saw. You 
don’t talk their language much, either, do you ?” 

“JS^ot a word if I can help it,” chuckled Chico; 
“ but I can understand it better than they think, 
and — oh, Joe ! I did find out something that 
would ” 

‘‘Would what, Chee ?” 

“ ISTever mind, now ; I don’t want to get us all in 
trouble ; but sooner than let you go and leave me, I 
believe I would risk it.” 

“Eisk it now. Buddy,” coaxed Joe; “what are 
you talking about?” 

“ Say, Joe,” whispered Chico, “ tell me one thing ; 
would your father stay and let us be good neighbors 
if he had a barrel full of money ?” 

“ A peck and a half would be enough,” laughed 
Joe ; “ have you found a bonanza in the mines ?” 

“ Say yes or no,” insisted Chico ; “ would you 
stay forever if you had a horseload of money ?” 

“Forever? Ho, indeed,” said Joe; “eighty or 
ninety years is all I could promise.” 

“ That will do,” laughed Chico, “ and now you 
must begin being good and not ask any more ques- 
tions, to-day. But to-morrow be sure and let me 
know if you hear your father talk about moving 
again. I’ll be here again as certain as I’m alive.” 


154 


THE CONVENT TREASURE. 


“Yes, and I must be going, now,” said Joe, with 
a glance at the setting sun ; “ it’s near evening and 
my father wants me to look after the shop to give 
him a chance for supper ; good-by, Chee.” 

“Joe,” said Chico, “can you keep a promise ?” 

“ You know, I can,” laughed Joe; “ why?” 

“ That will do, for to-day,” said Chico, picking 
up his water-gourd and darting off in the direction 
of the witch-cabin, as the neighbors called the shanty 
of his old foster mother. 

“Wonder what’s the matter wdth that boy,” 
thought Joe, when his playmate had vanished in 
the thickets of the chaparral ; “ ma3^be it scared him 
out of his wits when he heard we were going to 
leave him.” 

There were two or three customers on the porch 
when Joe reached his father’s step, but hearing the 
rattle of a supper-drum soon after, they took the 
hint and left, all but a barefoot young loafer, who 
hung back on the chance of coaxing his foster- 
brother’s friend out of a dram or a little smoking 
tobacco. 

“ Say, Joe,” he whispered, “ could you spare me 
another plug of that yellow tobacco, or ” 

“ Nix, my noble neighbor,” laughed Joe, who had 
a way of his own of dealing with such customers ; 
“ you didn’t pay yet for the last you got.” 

“But I’m going to the mines next week,” said the 
young Indian; it’s my luck-month, Joe, and I’m 
going to bring you half of all I get.” 

“ No, don’t, please,” said Joe, pushing a bottle of 


THE CONVENT TREASURE. 


155 


mescal out of the loafer’s reach ; “ you know what 
you got the last time you went there — got drunk, 
you did, and got ugly, and got a devilish good 
thrashing; I don’t hanker after a share of such 
things, Tasco. Better go home and go to sleep.” 

“Let me have one drink, Joe,” begged Tasco; 
“ just one, and I’ll go. Money, I haven’t any left, 
but still much thirst — thirst like a horse.” 

“Well, there’s a dipper at the pump,” said Joe; 
“ or I can lend you a horsepail if that will suit you 
better.”- 

“ That’s right, Joe,” said Mr. Holgar, who had 
been washing his hands at the other end of the 
store ; “ don’t trust that deadbeat any more ; and 
whatever you do, don’t let him have any more 
liquor. Just look at him, he’s more than half-drunk 
now — spent his last cent at Gruyo’s, I suppose, and 
then came here for credit. Get out of here, now, 
and stay out — do you hear me ?” 

“ Yes, I do,” muttered the Indian ; “ you treat 
me like a dog, Mr. Holgar, and if I had a mind to, 
I could ” 

“ Could what ?” cried the shopkeeper, stepping a 
stride nearer ; “ say another word and I’ll help you 
find the outside of this ranch.” 

The young Indian made no reply, but his black 
eyes assumed a very peculiar, almost warning ex- 
pression. “ Give me a ping of tobacco then, Mr. 
Holgar,” he whispered, as the shopkeeper turned to 
go ; “ it isn’t much, and may help you more than 
you think.” 


156 


THE CONVENT TREASURE. 


“The only thing I can give you is the good 
advice to get out of this,’’ snapped the shopkeeper, 
whose good humor had not been improved by the 
mail-carrier’s communication. “ Watch him, Joe, 
or he’ll grab something in spite of you.” 

“ All right,” said Joe, doubling himself up on the 
counter like a watch-dog on the porch of his mas- 
ter’s house. 

Tasco hung back, but recognizing the hopeless- 
ness of any other plan, suddenly turned and fol^ 
lowed the shopkeeper, who had crossed th.e court- 
yard and entered the portico of the old convent. 

Don Holgar heard his steps, but had no sooner 
recognized the undesired customer when he stopped 
and put his hand on his belt. Was that loafer go- 
ing to explain the meaning of his threat ? 

But the Indian, too, stopped. “ Don’t, senor, you 
don’t know what I want,” said he, as if he had read 
the white man’s thoughts ; “ will you permit me to 
say one word ?” 

“ Look here, Tasco, if you don’t ” 

“ Stop, senor. I’ll go ; but suppose I could tell you 
something that would make you a rich man before 
to-morrow morning ?” 

“That game won’t work, either,” laughed the 
shopkeeper. 

“ But I’m in earnest, senor ; there’s gold buried 
in that old convent ; the friars had no time to take 
it along when they were chased out, and if you want 
me to ” 


“ Yes, I want you to go home before I finish my 


THE CONVENT TREASURE. 


157 


supper,” growled the shopkeeper ; “ don’t let me 
catch you hanging around here Tvhen I get back,” 
said he, as he slammed the kitchen door. 

Money — gold — buried in the old convent ? The 
Indian’s words somehow haunted the shopkeeper’s 
thoughts, and he could not help remembering the 
tradition about the sudden flight of the friars, and 
the hints of their followers that a great treasure 
had been left behind — the accumulated result of 
years of work in the neighboring gold mines. The 
rumor had been reported to an agent of the revolu- 
tionary junta, and for nearly a month the convent 
ruins had been searched from battered turret to 
debris-choked cellar vaults, but a few coffins and a 
strong-box, with old Spanish documents, were the 
only rewards of the treasure hunt. Those docu- 
ments had been sent to Caracas, but referred merely 
to the title deeds of the cloister farms, and contracts 
with stone masons and carpenters. 

Still, the old tradition continued to haunt the 
neighborhood of Marquesas, and more than once 
Mr. Holgar had found mounds of loose earth, as if 
strangers had entered his garden under cover of 
darkness and explored the ground with pit-spades. 

“ I’d dig a hundred feet if there was any hope,” 
thought Mr. Holgar, as he was eating his frugal 
supper; “yes, I would take any risk sooner than 
have to go back to La Guayra penniless. And my 
poor boy ! What would become of him if the auc- 
tion plan should fail us, too ? If only suppose, 

now, that Indian really knows the hiding-place of 


158 


THE CONVENT TREASURE. 


the convent treasure? Indians had worked the 
mines for the mission fathers, and many of them 
had been converted and became confidential ser- 
vants. Was it possible that Tasco’s relatives had 
kept the secret all these years ?” 

Mr. Holgar had finished his meal, and for nearly 
ten minutes walked up and down the old convent 
kitchen as in a dream, while his only servant, a 
blear-eyed darkey, was preparing to serve supper 
for Master Joe. 

Suppose Tasco did know something, and could be 
bribed to communicate his knowledge ? Mr. Hol- 
gar had opened the door and stepped upon the 
moonlit portico. 

Yes, there he stood. Tasco had leaned against a 
pillar and taken the risk of awaiting the shop- 
keeper’s return. 

The touch of Mr. Holgar’s hand made him start. 

“ Don’t be scared, Tasco,” said the shopkeeper ; 
“ I want to have a talk with you ; just come this 
way and sit down under this tree for one minute. 
Oh, Joe !” he called out as soon as the young Indian 
had complied with his request, “ come to supper, 
now, Joe; I’ll be back in a minute.” 

Joe presently came skipping across the court- 
yard and struck a beeline for the kitchen door. 

“Come on now, Tasco,” whispered Mr. Holgar; 
“ I want to see you about that proposition of yours. 
Look here” — pushing him into the shop and closing 
and bolting both doors— “look here, Tasco, will 
you tell me where they buried that gold if I let you 


THE CONVENT TREASURE. 


159 


pick out a basketful of good things in this shop 
every day 

“ Yes, I will ; going to find it out for you right 
away,” said Tasco, with a greedy glance at the bot- 
tle shelf ; “ only let me have one ” 

“ One glass of good lemonade is all you will get 
this night, Tasco,” said Mr. Holgar ; “ I don’t want 
to kill you with that drugged mescal ; and what do 
you mean by finding things out for me ? Who knows 
it if you don’t ?” 

“ My grandmother does,” said Tasco ; “ knows it 
all, senor ; saw them bury the gold and measure the 
walls to mark the spot.” 

“ What walls, Tasco ?” handing him a plateful of 
jelly-cakes. 

“ In the basement of the old convent,” said the 
young Indian, half inclined to push back the plate, 
but remembering the baskets full of good things to 
come. 

‘‘ Will your grandmother be home to-morrow 
morning ?” 

“Yes, she’s always home, or near home,” said 
Tasco, just sipping his lemonade ; “ but will you let 
me do the picking when we fill those baskets — after 
she has told you ?” 

Mr. Holgar smiled. “ All right, Tasco,” said he ; 
“ here, you can take this woolen blanket to begin 
with ; you’re reeling, boy, and I’m afraid you will 
land in the weeds before you get home.” 

Tasco staggered out into the night-mist, and Mr. 
Holgar unbolted the yard-door. 


160 


THE CONVENT TREASURE. 


“We may come out all right, after all, Buddy,” 
said he, when Master Joe came dancing back from 
supper. He had made up his mind to dig under 
that basement from wall to wall if the old witch 
should refuse to complete her grandson’s communi- 
cation. 

“ Oh, papa,” said J oe, “ have you got any good 
news ?” 

“Well, yes,” said Mr. Holgar, hesitatingly; 
“ they’re on the way, if they have not quite reached 
us yet.” Then, with a sudden change of topic: 
“ Have you ever been at the witch-cabin, Joe ?” 

“ Where Tasco’s grandmother lives? Yes, that’s 
where little Chico lives, too; isn’t that the place 
you mean ? I was there last week.” 

“ How far is it from here, you think ?” 

*“ About two miles, or a little more. They call it 
just one mile from the Parrot Creek bridge.” 

“ Many dogs out there ?” 

“ At the witch-place ? Oh, dear me, no ; they are 
so poor they could not feed a pet canary bird. 
That old woman cannot be much of a witch or she 
would witch herself a few dollars to buy Chico a 
pair of shoes. The pair I gave him a year ago are 
all in shreds again.” 

Mr. Holgar made no reply. 

“ They are so poor that they cannot buy a frying- 
pan, and have to roast their meat on a spit,” added 
Joe. 

“ I’m going out there to-morrow, Joe,” said Mr. 
Holgar. 


THE con VENT TREASURE. 


161 


“Out to Chico's place — the witch-cabin, I mean? 
Oh, papa, what for V 

“On some busmess,” said the shopkeeper eva- 
sively. “ And now look here, it’s near nine o’clock, 
and you had better go to bed, pet ; we can talk all 
that over some other day.” He felt the need of 
being alone with his own thoughts for awhile. 

“ Good night, then, papa,” said J oe, and went to 
his bedroom wondering. What could be the mat- 
ter? Little Chico dropping hints and refusing to 
explain, and here was his father at the same game. 
“ Business ? At the witch-cabin ! What’s up, I 
wonder?” thought Master Joe; when he fell asleep 
to dream of wizard dens and flying dragons. 


162 


THE CONVENT TREASURE, 


CHAPTER 11. 

When Joe came down to breakfast the next 
morning he found his father in the yard, tiling an 
old mining spade. 

“Why, papa,” said he, “you are dressed to go 
out; “I didn’t keep you waiting, did I?” 

“Ho, but hurry up, now, Joe,” said Mr. Holgar, 
as he pushed the spade under the porch; “I’m 
going to the witch-den this morning, and I want 
you to mind the shop while I am gone.” 

Joe noticed that his father tilled a little hand- 
basket with cakes and preserves. “You will be 
back before noon, won’t you, papa ?” he asked. 

“Yes, before dinner, anyhow,” said Mr. Holgar. 

“ Then he does not want those things for himself 
— they must be for Chico’s folks,” thought Joe, 
with a feeling of relief. He had been afraid his 
father would go to the witch-house and pick a 
quarrel on account of Tasco’s impudence. 

About a hundred yards from the creek bridge 
the shopkeeper saw a dark object like a big gray 
bundle in a dell of the reed-grass thicket and clam- 
bered down the embankment to investigate. There 
lay Tasco wrapped up in his woolen blanket and 
fast asleep. It required several kicks as well as 


THE CONVENT TREASURE. 


163 


shouts to get the young loafer on his feet, and Mr. 
Holgar made him go down to the creek to wash his 
face and straighten out his tangle of matted black 
hair before he would take him along. 

“And you are sure we’ll find the old lady 
home ?” asked the shopkeeper. 

“ Yes, sefior,” stammered Tasco, “ no fear of that 
— but you better do all the talking.” 

“^Tow, that’s nice,” said the shopkeeper; “didn’t 
you tell me you were going to attend to that part 
of the business?” 

“Yes, but I might spoil it,” faltered Tasco. 
“ She is mad at me, I’m afraid, because ” 

“Because of what?” 

“ For being late, and not helping her much yes- 
terday.” 

“ Oh, is that all ? Here, carry this basket,” 
laughed Mr. Holgar. “ I’m going to smooth that 
part of the trouble for you.” 

The witch-cabin was a little adobe shanty on a 
wayside knoll with a wonderful view toward a 
range of mountains rising like cloudcastles on the 
southwestern horizon. The sun-dried bricks had 
yielded to the storms of the rainy season here and 
there, and deep furrows along the sloping floor 
seemed to answer the purpose of drainage incase of 
inundations. Three hammocks dangling from the 
rafters of the rickety roof, one table and four home- 
made stools constituted the entire inventory of 
household furniture. On one of these stools sat 
the old witch. Ho other name would have given a 


164 


THE CONVENT TREASURE. 


better idea of her appearance ; her long, thin fingers 
resembling the claws of a bird, her owl nose, almost 
touching her bony chin, and her deep-set eyes, red- 
dened from the smoke of the tumble-down chimney. 

She was poking about the embers, and at the 
sound of footsteps only half-turned her head and 
then made a grab for a stick that served the purpose 
of a poker. 

“ Hurr}’' up, and get me some chips, you good-for- 
nothing, lazy loafer,” she snarled, “ fooling around 
all night and leaving me here to do your work as 
well as mine. Hurry up, now, before I hit you over 
the head.” 

Tasco slunk back, and the shopkeeper quietly 
helped himself to a seat in the next hammock and 
proceeded to manufacture a cigarette. 

Keceiving no reply, the witch turned her head 
again, a little further this time, and at sight of the 
visitor her growls subsided to a low’ grumble. She 
had recognized the shopkeeper, but did not think it 
worth her while to notice his presence. What did 
he want here, anyhow? Just to get a piece of live 
coal for his cigarette? Or did Tasco owe him 
money, and he had come here to collect it ? A con- 
temptuous grin twinkled over her wrinkled face at 
the mere idea of that possibility. 

The shopkeeper, in the meantime, had decided on 
a plan of proceeding. 

“Hard times, senora,” said he, kindly. “Your 
boy, Tasco, told me about your troubles, and I 
thought I had better call and see if I can’t help you 
a bit.” 


THE CONVENT TREASURE. 


165 


You ? Is that what brought you here asked 
the old hag, now facing about to gimlet the visitor 
with her searching eyes. “ Are you not the man 
who lives in the old convent and is going to sell 
his land to pay his debts 

Village gossip spreads at an amazing rate, even 
in the backwoods of Venezuela. 

Mr. Holgar would have preferred another topic 
of conversation just then, but contrived to parry 
the blow. 

‘‘Yes, times are hard, Mrs. Gaspar,” he replied; 
“ but then, you know, good luck makes people self- 
ish. It is only in trouble that we come together to 
see if we can help one another.” 

The old woman nodded her head. “ That’s so, 
seflor,” said she, facing the chimney again. “ If 
hard times can make a body kind, I ought to be the 
kindest old cat in the Sierra ; and maybe that’s the 
reason I didn’t break Tasco's head long ago. But 
if it comes to helping my neighbors, I’ve first to try 
and help myself — ^you wouldn’t believe, sir, that I 
had nothing to eat except wild berries and bird 
eggs these last two weeks ?” 

“Yes, that’s what Tasco told me,” said the shop- 
keeper; ‘'and look here ” — producing his basket. 
“ I’ve tried to help a little bit, anyhow ; here’s a 
lot of nice cakes and canned fish and a little sugar 
and a pound of chocolate. It isn’t much ; but it 
will help for a few days.” 

“ Thank you, sir,” said the old hag, handling the 
contents of the basket with trembling fingers, “ that 


166 


THE CONVENT TREASURE. 


certainly will help me ; but my eyes are so poor I 
can’t quite see yet how that will help youN 

“ She’s coming to the point,” thought Don Hol- 
gar, and waited till the old lady had sampled one of 
his cakes before he ventured a reply. 

‘‘You heard about those strangers that went to 
the mines a month ago, didn’t you ?” said he at last. 

“ Strangers ? Do you mean Spaniards ?” snarled 
the hag ; “ may the ground open and swallow them 
down to perdition, the whole race of them, the way 
they have treated me !” 

Mr. Holgar had rather been thinking of two Yan- 
kee prospectors who had visited the Sierra a few 
weeks ago, but now saw his way to a lucky change 
of programme. 

“Yes, those Spaniards,” said he; “did you hear 
that they are going to buy the old convent and tear 
it down to put up a factory ? They are going to 
use the stones for a new building, and dig deep 
cellars — tear up all the foundations, I understand.” 

“ You do not say so? And when is all that going 
to happen ?” asked Mrs. Gaspar, dropping a piece of 
cake she had been clutching with trembling hand. 

“Perhaps next month, madam,” said the shop- 
keeper; “and then — what good could it do you to 
let those strangers get the benefit of the secret you 
have kept all these years?” 

The old hag wheeled about to face a corner where 
her grandson had been sitting, silent, watching the 
progress of Mr. Holgar’s enterprise. 

“ Tasco,” said she, “ for Heaven’s sake, what have 
you been doing ?” 


THE CONVENT TREASURE. 


167 


Tasco had risen from his stool, and taken a step 
toward the door. 

“It wasn’t Tasco at all,” interposed the shop- 
keeper ; “ you know what they have been talking 
about, these many years. I have no doubt there is 
a fortune hidden somewhere under my buildings, 
and, seeing the way you are suffering here, Mrs. 
Gaspar, it occurred to me you ought to tell me all 
you know, and let us share what we might find — 
before it is everlastingly too late.” 

Mrs. Gaspar, too, had struggled to her feet, still 
facing her grandson. 

“Tasco,” she snarled — but the words that followed 
were in the speech of her native tribe, and it was 
the first time in Mr. Ilolgar’s experience that he 
heard a grown-up lad answer a remark with a 
shriek of terror. Tasco, thus far, had not opened 
his mouth ; but at his grandmother’s last words he 
screamed as a youngster might scream at a dreadful 
threat, or the approach of a bully with a club. 

“Kemember, madam, it may be too late next 
week,” resumed the shopkeeper ; “the only question 
now is if you are going to let those Gringos reap the 
fruit of your self-sacrifice, or get ahead of them to 
help a friend — and yourself.” 

But Mrs. Gaspar had collapsed in her chimney- 
corner, and was now sitting in tlio ashes, covering 
her face with her hands, and buried in deep thought. 

“ Mr. Holgar,” said she at last, “ is that what you 
came here for?” 

“ Yes, madam,” said the shopkeeper, misunder- 


168 


THE CONVENT THEASmE. 


standing her question on purpose ; “ it is to help you 
I came, because I have to do it now or never, and it 
is the same with you if you should like to do any- 
thing for me.” 

“ Keep your seat just a few minutes, sir,” said the 
witch in a strangely changed tone of voice ; “ you 
must not leave here without having a cup of some- 
thing warm, and while I’m at work perhaps my 
poor old eyes will help me to see my way a little 
clearer.” 

Then turning upon her grandson again, she began 
what seemed to be a cross-examination in her native 
speech, for Tasco, too, now ventured an occasional 
reply, while she kept busying herself fanning the 
embers into a blaze. 

“JSTo, no, I don’t want you to go to any trouble 
for my sake,” protested Mr. Holgar when the old 
hag began to brush off the table with a stump of a 
turkey -wdng, and spread a threadbare napkin 
preparatory to an apology for a lunch. 

“You have to try a cup of your own chocolate, 
anyhow,” insisted the witch ; “ come — take a seat 
on this stool, and excuse the looks of this cup” — 
serving some steaming liquid in a rusty tin cup 
without a handle. 

To humor the old woman Mr. Holgar pushed his 
stool to the table and raised the cup to his lips, but 
instantly put it down again. The drug-like fumes 
of the mixture and the taste of the first drop con- 
vinced him that the chocolate had been poisoned ; 
but with rare presence of mind he reached for his 


THE CONVENT TREASURE. 


169 


basket, to get a pinch of sugar, and while the old 
hag fussed about in quest of a saucer and a spoon 
he contrived to slip a big cotton handkerchief from 
his coat-pocket and transfer it to a hiding-place 
between his open jacket and shirt. Before she had 
time to watch his movements more closely a large 
part of her preparation had gone where it would 
trouble his washerwoman rather than a coroner’s 
WJ- 

‘‘Have another cup, Mr. Holgar?” inquired the 
witch. 

“ No, this one will do me ; thanks,” said the shop- 
keeper. “ I’ll send you a lot more to-morrow, and 
some nice American bacon. And what do you say: 
shall we try our luck together?” 

“Will you be very busy to-morrow, sir ?” asked 
the hag. 

“That depends — I’ll find time or make it, to 
come here any hour you say.” 

“ Yes, that’s just what I was going to ask you,” 
said the old woman. “ I’ve to think this over and 
see some of our folks about it ; but to-morrow at 
this time will settle it one way or other. But let me 
ask you one question : That old convent is haunted, 
isn’t it?” 

The shopkeeper could barely suppress a grin. 
To save his chickens, he had contrived to circulate 
a report about blood-freezing apparitions stalking 
about the deserted halls of the old monastery every 
night, and perhaps the old hag was trying to kill 
more than one bird with the stone of her last 
question. 


170 


THE CONVENT TREASURE. 


“ I’ll straighten that out, you may be sure,” he 
replied. ‘‘Down in Cardenas I have a friend who 
can send me a lot of consecrated incense, and wher- 
ever you fumigate a building with that, the spooks 
lose their power for evil.” 

“ Couldn’t you send me a little of that stuff, too ?” 
asked the old woman after a pause of reflection. 

“ Why, certainly,” said the shopkeeper ; “ enough 
to rout a whole army of ghosts, if 3^ou like. May- 
be I could also teach you the Latin prayers you 
have to say while you swing your censers.” 

Mrs. Gaspar became thoughtful again. 

“ But that won’t scare off the government spies, 
will it ?” she asked. “ I understand they claim all 
the treasures buried by the Spaniards and old 
Indian kings ?” 

“ Why, yes ; we would have to skip out, I sup- 
pose,” laughed Mr. Ilolgar, “ but we shall have 
traveling money enough for that matter. Don’t 
you think so ?” 

“But suppose we had: where would you ffo, 
Mr. Holgar?” 

Holgar hesitated, and a warning voice seemed to 
dictate his reply. 

“ Why, straight south,” he said, “ to the Orinoco 
Kiver and across to the British settlements, where 
we would be as safe as in heaven.” 

“ Then we would have to go by way of Cardenas 
and San Juan del Lobo?” asked the old witch, 
leering up from under her bushy eyebrows. 

“ Yes, to begin with,” said Mr. Holgar, “ and per- 


THE CONVENT TREASURE. 


171 


haps a smart lad like Tasco might know the looks 
of the woods down there and show us trails where 
no spy could track us.” 

“ That’s just what I was thinking about,” said the 
witch with a low chuckle ; “ could you come again 
before noon to-morrow, senor?” 

“Any time that will suit you; let’s say ten 
o’clock. But I have troubled you enough now for 
one morning, I suppose. So good-by, and don’t be 
hard on Tasco; he was trying to help you, I’m 
sure, and carried that basket when he showed me 
the way this morning.” 

Swarms of paroquets shrieked about the top 
branches of the wayside trees when Mr. Holgar 
reached the wagon-road, but in spite of their noise, 
he could hear the screeching of the old hag on the 
hill, and now and then the angry voice of the young 
Indian, whose shyness might have been due to the 
presence of a stranger. 

“ Tasco is catching it hot,” thought Mr. Holgar. 
“ Wonder if he knew what sort of trick the old cat 
was trying with my chocolate. Maybe it will quite 
disappoint her if she cannot attend my funeral to- 
morrow, and they may try something else, but they 
will find out I’ve got a few points ahead of them in 
this game.” 

Joe was sitting on the veranda mending one of 
his bird cages, and at sight of his father ran to the 
gate and raised his eyes with an inquiring look. 
Somehow or other, the little fellow knew that things 
had been going wrong the last month, and that the 


172 


THE CONVENT TREASURE, 


next few days were going to decide the fate of the 
old convent ranch, for better or worse. 

“ All right, so far, Joe,” said Mr. Holgar, patting 
his boy’s head, “ and the good news Ave are looking 
for may get here sooner than we expect. Have you 
had your dinner ?” 

“ Yes, nearly an hour ago,” said Joe. “ Old Pete 
is keeping you a nice rabbit stew warm ; Ave caught 
four more last night.” 

“ Good boy ! And noAv look here. As soon as I 
get back from the kitchen, I Avant you and Pete to 
go to the mill pasture and catch our mules. Better 
take a pocketful of crackers along so you can get 
hold of Yenada the first thing ; and after that the 
two others cannot get aAvay from you.” 

“ The mules ? Oh, papa, are we going to leave ?” 

“ Hever mind, pet, Ave’ll knoAV very soon, I can 
promise you that much; but you know it spoils 
good news to publish it on the market square. 
Don’t fret noAv, and if Pete asks you any questions 
you can tell him he’s going to San Bafael to-mor- 
roAv to fetch us a feAv sacks of salt. We’re clean 
out of cattle-salt, I think.” 

The sun Avas near doAvn when Joe and Pete came 
trotting across the plaza Avith the mill mules, and 
as soon as the old darke}^ had got them safe in the 
convent stable, Joe put on his shoes and raced 
down the glen to the rock spring. 

There were footprints all over the sand-patch ; 
but where Avas Chico? Joe looked for him up and 
down the ramhla and in the berry patch below, and 


THE CONVENT TREASURE. 


173 


finally concluded that the little fellow had been 
waiting for him all afternoon and left after giving 
him up for this day. He had not covered the 
spring, according to their custom, but close to the 
water’s edge Joe found a flat stone erected on a 
cleft stick as on a signpost, and inscribed with two 
words: Ma yana.^'^ Joe had contrived to teach 
his little friend the rudiments of the three K’s, and 
the letters on the stone had been traced with red 
berry juice, pretty legibly ; but were those Indian 
words ? They were certainly not Spanish. What 
the wonder could it mean ? 

Joe had nearly given it up, when it occurred to 
him that the puzzle in cactus-colors might be the 
poor little lad’s way of spelling maftana — “ to-mor- 
row.” On second thought Joe felt sure of it. Yes, 
Chico had probably been waiting at the spring till 
the dread of his foster-mother had got the better of 
his desire to wait a little longer, and his signboard 
meant that he was going to try for better luck next 
day. 

“To-morrow, then,” thought Joe, and could 
hardly go to sleep that night. He did not look for 
any trouble, but somehow felt a foreboding that 
manana was going to be an eventful day, though he 
hardly expected to find out much before the next 
afternoon. 

But early the next morning he dreamed that he 
was sitting under an oak tree, and that every once 
in a while an acorn hit him square on the head. 
They hit him on the shoulder, too, for that matter. 


174 


THE CONVENT TREASURE. 


but when the fifth or sixth struck him close to the 
ear he began to suspect that there must be a mis- 
chievous boy on that tree, and rubbed his eyes to 
catch the offender in the act. 

“ Joe — oh, Josy !” came a voice from the window ; 
“ don’t go to sleep again, please !” 

There was Chico, hanging on to the iron window- 
bars, and with one foot resting in the fork of a 
bignonia tree that reached nearly to the roof above 
Joe’s bedroom. 

“ Wh}^, Chee ! If you didn’t make me dream the 
funniest things!” said Joe, still rubbing his eyes; 
“ and look here, you little scamp, did you hit me 
with all those pebbles ?” 

‘‘ I had to, Joe,” said Chico ; ‘‘ if you ain’t the 
hardest boy to wake I ever saw ! I called your 
name twenty times ; but you wouldn’t budge, and I 
couldn’t yell, and get the whole neighborhood after 
me.” 

“ No, but why — what is it, Chee ? Did you want 
to see me about not coming to the spring yester- 
day ? I did go, and ” 

“ No, no, it isn’t that,” said Chico ; please, put 
on your clothes quick, and let me in ; you would be 
glad I came if you knew what I’m going to tell 
you.” 

“All right; climb on to that balcony, and I’ll 
open the door for you,” said Joe; “you must have 
got up quite early this morning.” 

“Yes; I didn’t sleep more than an hour last 
night, I think,” said Chico, as he slipped into the 


IHE CONVENT TREASURE. 


175 


room ; “ the cabo, the old chief, was at our cabin, 
and guess what IVe found out: They are going to 
kill you and your father, and old man Pete, too, if 
he comes along ; and they are going to take all your 
treasure, and bury you in the swamp between here 
and Cardenas. Oh, Joe ! Whatever are you going 
to do in Cardenas ?” 

Joe turned pale as death. “ Don’t stir, Chee,’^ 
said he ; ‘‘sit down here on my bed, and keep quiet, 
just for one minute ; I’m going to fetch my father 
right away.” 

“ All right,” said Chico, and Joe darted down- 
stairs, haunted by a horrible dread that his father 
could already have started for the witch-cabin, for 
there were days when he let one of the neighbors 
mind the shop rather than wake his boy too early 
in the morning. 

But no — thank Heaven ! There he was, sorting 
a pile of old salt-bags. “ Oh, papa !” cried Joe, 
after a swift look up and down the street ; “ come 
up to my bedroom — quick ! Chico is there, waiting 
for you ; they are going to kill us all, and he over- 
heard them and came running to warn us !” 

“ Say, Pete !” shouted Mr. Ilolgar ; “ come over 
here a minute, and watch the store while I’m gone ; 
you can try and pick out a couple of stout salt-bags 
in that pile.” 

“I’ll be there in a minute, boss,” said the old 
darkey, and Mr. Holgar followed his boy upstairs. 

“ Did they know you came here ?” he asked when 
the sobbing youngster had repeated his report. 


176 


THE CONVENT TREASURE. 


“ No, seflor ; she gave me a basket and told me to 
go in the woods and not come back till I had it full 
of eggs. They want to get rid of me, I think.” 

Mr. Holgar rubbed his hands. “They couldn’t 
have done me a greater favor,” he chuckled. “ The 
idea of getting this little lad into trouble is all that 
worried me; but I suppose they expect getting a 
shipload of gold, now, and can get along better 
without him. Perhaps they didn’t want him for a 
witness, either. You wouldn’t stand by, pet, and 
see them cut our throats, would you ?” he asked, 
putting his hand on the youngster’s shoulders. 

“ No, sefior,” sobbed Chico, “ and they know it, 
too ; they have to kill me first before I let them 
hurt Josy.” 

“They supposed you were asleep when they 
hatched their little plot, didn’t they ?” asked Mr. 
Holgar. 

“ Yes, and then they don’t know I understand more 
than a few words of their language ; I learned it 
from Tasco’s cousin when we went out hunting 
together, but I never let them suspect it; and it 
often tickled me to hear them talk about things 
they supposed I would never find out. I heard 
them speak about this treasure more than once.” 

“ Oh, papa, what does he mean ?” asked Joe, who 
had been sitting on his bed mute and almost para- 
lyzed with horror ; “ have we a treasure in the 
house, and do they know it ?” 

“ Under the house, anyhow,” laughed Mr^ Hol- 
gar ; “ but Pm much mistaken if we don’t get it out 
before to-morrow morning.” 


THE CONVENT TREASTTRE. 


m 


“ Oh, no^v I know what you put that thing under 
the porch for,” said Joe, remembering the miner’s 
spade ; “ let me sharpen my little garden spade, too, 
please, and I’ll help you all a boy can help.” 

“ Good lad,” said Mr. Ilolgar, smiling ; “ I will 
give you a chance ; but first I’m going to see Chico’s 
grandmother, and she’s going to help us, too, 
whether she knows it or not.” 

“She isn’t my grandmother,” pouted Chico; 
“ she’s Tasco’s ; but I’ve nothing to do with them ; 
they stole me in war-time.” 

“ Papa, for goodness sake, you are not going back 
to that cut-throat place, are you ?” 

“ I promised to, Joe, and don’t you be the least 
bit afraid ; they need me more than I need them, 
and want me to keep off the ghosts while they are 
digging for boodle. It’s next week, on the road to 
Cardenas, they intend to knock me in the head ; not 
now or to-morrow.” 

“ At least take Chico along, so he can hear what 
they say to each other,” suggested Joe. 

“I thought you had more sense than that, Josy,” 
laughed Mr. Holgar; “don’t you see they would 
suspect him right away ? ]^o matter what they say 
about us, now, we know their little scheme, and can 
take our measures accordingly. There is not the 
least danger of their trying to hurt me till they 
catch me in the Cardenas swamp ; and after what I 
told them about the haunted rooms in the convent, 
I’m pretty sure the old witch will be glad that her 
poisoned chocolate didn’t kill me.” 


178 


THE CONVENT TREASURE. 


“Yes, that’s so,” said Chico; “I heard her say 
she wished nothing would happen to you till you 
had helped them raise those pots.” 

“ Pots ? Is there more than one ? I’m glad to 
hear it,” laughed Mr. Holgar ; “ and you had better 
relieve Pete, now, Joe, and tell him to saddle Cabe- 
zote and get his bags ready. I’m going to give the 
old fellow a chance for a little fun of his own in San 
Eafael while we’re attending that picnic in our 
cellar ; too many dancers might spoil the ball. And 
now, about Chico. Let him stay just where he is, 
and fetch him up a bit of lunch after awhile ; the 
poor little fellow didn’t sleep a wink last night, I 
fear, and he can make up for lost time now while 
he has a chance. We may need him this evening, 
and you too, Joe; so don’t run around more than 
you can help; just keep an eye on the store, and 
take it easy till I get back.” 

He started for the door, but Joe hung to his neck. 
“ I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he promised. 

“ Papa, please, take care of yourself,” sobbed Joe ; 
“ if something should happen to you, I would be all 
alone in the world.” 


THE CONVENT TREASURE. 


179 


CHAPTER III. 

The morning mist still clung to the valleys when 
Mr. Holgar reached the parrot-bridge, but he knew 
the road too well to need a guide this time, and even 
remembered the short-cut trail from the wagon-road 
to the door of the witch-cabin. Tasco was sitting 
on the threshold, whittling a wooden spoon, but 
presently looked up and then rose and entered the 
shanty, probably to announce the arrival of the 
expected visitor. 

Mr. Holgar reached back under his coat to push 
his revolver to a short-notice position. In spite of 
his own arguments a cold shudder passed over him 
as he remembered that chocolate episode. He knew 
he had to deal with desperate adversaries, and 
wanted to come prepared for all emergencies. For 
all he could tell, the old cabo had stayed to take a 
a hand in the game. 

But Tasco and the witch were alone. 

“ I knew you would keep your word, senor,’’ she 
croaked, rising from her stool and hobbling up to 
shake hands with her guest, “ and I’m so glad to 
see you look well,” she added. “ This mineral 
water from our spring doesn’t agree with everybody, 
and I was afraid you might not be well this 
morning.” 


180 


TBE CONVENT TBEASmE. 


“ I did feel a little strange,” said the shopkeeper, 
with several twinkles in his eyes. “ But when I got 
home I took a dose of miracle drops and I’m 
all right again.” 

“There’s times when a bottle of such stuff is 
worth more than gold,” said the old hag, with a look 
of probably sincere conviction. 

“Then what do you say. Will you let me sell 
you two bottles of it for a share of that gold in the 
pots ?” 

Mrs. Gaspar’s head turned, and for a moment 
her eye rested on the shopkeeper’s face with a 
peculiar expression of mingled fear and curiosity. 
Was that man a wizard coming to try his tricks on 
a sham witch ? What could he know about pots ? 
And had he really found an antidote for a drug 
that had been known to kill stouter men in three or 
four hours?” 

“ Mr. Holgar,” said the witch, “ we have talked 
the matter over, and we decided to trust you, rather 
than take any chance with those strangers ; only 
you must promise us one thing — don’t bring any- 
body but yourself when you come to the cell court 
of the old convent to-night ; you know what risk 
we are running, and we don’t want any outsiders 
spying around. Will you agree to that?” 

The shopkeeper thought swift and hard. Had 
that committee of cut-throats changed their plan, 
and were they going to kill him in his own cellar as 
soon as they had got their claws on the treasure? 

He somehow could feel the gimlet eyes of the old 


THE CONVENT TREASUUE. 


181 


hag on his face, and she might be a mind-reader for 
all he knew ; but he defied her to guess the plan 
that darted across his brain just then. 

“ Yes, I accept your proposition,” he replied. “I 
will trust you and come to the convent court alone 
to-night.” 

She reached out her long, bony claw, to shake 
hands and ratify the contract. 

“ How many are you going to bring along, Mrs. 
Gaspar ?” 

“ Only Tasco and myself.” 

“ All right, then,” thought the shopkeeper ; “ and 
it doesn’t matter much now if she should break her 
word.” 

“But there is another thing, Mr. Holgar,” said 
the old witch. “ What about those haunts — those 
night ghosts in the convent ? Won’t they be apt to 
trouble us ?” 

Holgar had come prepared for that question. 
“ Look here, Mrs. Gaspar,” he said, “ do you 
think the digging will take us longer than an 
hour ?” 

“ Ho ; not if you have a pick and a stout spade.” 

“ And couldn’t you manage to come a little early, 
say nine or ten o’clock to-night ?” 

“ I suppose so. Why ?” 

“ Then there isn’t much risk of any trouble. I 
have thought this matter over, and talked to a man 
that knows all about haunted places, and it’s just 
ninety-nine to one that these spooks are the common 
midnight ghosts that work only one hour and dis- 


182 


THE CONVENT TREASURE. 


appear again at one o’clock, you know. Well, don’t 
you see? If we get done before midnight, they 
don’t get a ghost of a chance to bother us.” 

“ And are there no other spooks ?” asked the old 
hag with a sigh of relief. 

That’s just what I was going to tell you. There 
is one other kind — diiendes maestros they call them, 
master ghosts ; they have power all night, as long 
as darkness lasts, but they are as scarce as white 
crows. If one of them should room at the convent 
we’ll have to send for consecrated incense ; but it’s 
more than probable that there will be no need of 
that; it might be found out, you know, and set 
folks a-talking.” 

The old hag nodded approval. “That’s so, Mr. 
Ilolgar” — slapping his shoulder; valgame Dios! 
there’s really nothing that a white man doesn’t 
know ! I, or Tasco, would never have thought of 
all that. Well, then, you can look for us about 
nine o’clock, or soon after; that’s just about when 
the moon will rise to-night. The sooner we get 
this job done, the better.” 

“ That’s true,” said Mr. Ilolgar, as the old witch 
accompanied him to her door-step; “those Span- 
iards I told you about know more than is good for 
us, and they have been nosing about my place sev- 
eral times this week ; but now, after getting so near 
to the end of our troubles, I’ll not let them beat us, 
I promise you ; and to-night, if I catch any human 
beings fooling around that convent except you and 
Tasco, I’ll shoot them dead as sure as I can make 
my big shotgun go off.” 


THE CONVENT TREASURE. 


183 


With that flea in her ear, Mrs. Gaspar hobbled 
back to her cabin. 

Holgar felt like slapping his own shoulder. 
“ Another point ahead on this game,” he chuckled ; 
“ I wonder what those rascals will think of them- 
selves by this time to-morrow.” 

ITear the parrot-bridge a boy was sitting on a 
tree-stump, but suddenly rose to his feet and came 
tearing up the road with open arms. 

“Why, Joe, boy! what are you doing here?” 
asked Mr. Holgar ; “ who is looking after the store ?” 

“ I locked it up, papa,” faltered the poor lad ; 
“please don’t scold me, I — I — couldn’t stand it no 
longer ; I didn’t know what might happen ; but 
here you are,” and clutching his father’s arm he 
covered it with impetuous kisses. 

“Well, well, what’s all that for?” laughed his 
father ; “ for my being good and being alive yet, 
eh ? I told you, pet, there was no danger ; I’m sure 
your Chico told the truth about those folks at the 
witch-trap, but they have to get up pretty early in 
the morning to work a trick like that on me.” 

“ And are we going to — what we talked about, 
you know ?” 

“ Try our luck with our spades ? Yes, that’s as 
good as settled, and there will be fun to-night ; only 
I’m afraid you will be worn out and tired, the way 
you are exciting yourself about nothing.” 

“Ho, indeed,” said Joe confidently ; “if ever you 
saw a boy work hard in your life you will see it to- 
night. tfust let’s get the least idea where those 


184 


THE CONVENT TREASURE. 


pots are, and then watch me if I don’t have them 
by the handle in ten minutes.” 

Mr. Holgar smiled. “ I will have to do the first 
digging alone, I expect,” said he; “but you and 
Chico can help in a different way; and after we 
have got rid of those rascals, you can help me finish 
the job.” 

“You are not going to kill them, are you, papa?” 

“ ITo, indeed, only going to keep them from kill- 
ing you and me ; I’ll tell you all about our plan as 
soon as I’ve had a few words with your friend. Are 
you quite sure we can trust him, Joe ?” 

“ Papa, you can trust that boy more than you can 
trust me,” said Joe; “I’ve seen his grandmother 
beat him as if she was going to kill him, but she 
couldn’t make him say an3^thing against me or you. 
If anybody would beat me half as hard, they could 
make me own up I had stolen cordwood from the 
man in the moon, I know.” 

“ That’s right, Joe, stand up for your friend, and 
never mind my jokes ; the fact is I’m proud of hav- 
ing two such youngsters as you and Chico, for I’ll 
have to take care of both of you, after this, I expect. 
And I owe it to him, too ; he has saved our lives 
this morning, whatever they might be worth, by 
way of a little addition to the value of those pots.” 

“ Are they big pots, I wonder ?” asked Joe archly. 

“ Oh, big enough to hold fifty thousand dollars, 
anyhow, I reckon,” said the shopkeeper. 

Joe stopped in the middle of the road, and turned 
about to watch his father’s face. “ Do you really 
mean that, papa ?” 


THE CONVENT TREASURE. 


185 


‘‘I can’t swear to it, of course,” laughed Mr. IIol- 
gar ; “ but the way I understand that old witch, it’s 
all in gold, and two or three iron pots can hold a 
good many thousand dollars in that shape. It might 
be a hundred thousand, as likely as not.” 

Joe walked along in the way his thoughts used 
to wander in fairyland, and didn’t say a word for 
nearly two minutes. 

“ Why, papa !” he burst out at last, “ with half 
that much we could go to Mexico and see those fine 
hunting grounds in the high Sierras you often told 
me about.” 

“Yes, and that’s just what I mean to do,” said 
Mr. Ilolgar. “ If everything turns out as I expect, 
we’ll pack up to-night, and I’ll then let you know 
what you caught those mules for, when you missed 
your little friend at the well.” 

In spite of his father’s warning, Joe could not 
restrain himself any longer, and had to vent his 
excitement in a series of handsprings and somer- 
saults. 

“ If you don’t stop I’ll send you to the sunstroke 
hospital, Joe,” laughed the shopkeeper, “and not 
let you out till we are just ready to leave.” 

“ Then I must behave or burst,” said Master Joe ; 
“ I wouldn’t miss that fun to-night for — well, for all 
there’s in the biggest pot, anyhow.” 

“You can saddle now and start out, Pete,” said 
Mr. Ilolgar, when he met his darkey at the gate ; 
“and when you pay for that salt you will have 
thirty shillings left to attend to your own market- 


186 


THE CONVENT TREASURE. 


ing ; you want a new hat, for one thing. And if 
Cabezote should need a rest, you can stay over 
Sunday, and it will be time enough if you get back 
here by Tuesday morning.’’ 

“ I’se a thousand times obliged, boss,” said the 
darkey ; “ I ought to be done saddling afore this, 
but I wanted to tell you about one thing before I 
go: there must be ghostes in this house; when I 
swept the upstairs corridor I heard something cough- 
ing in the room where Master Joe sleeps, and I had 
seen Joesey run out of the yard and up the road 
that same five minutes. It mought be witches.” 

“Ho, nothing but a common ghost, I reckon,” 
said Mr. Ilolgar; “but you’re a good fellow for 
taking care of the house like that, and when you 
get back I want you to look in your trunk ; there 
are some presents coming this week, and you are 
going to have your share of it.” 

“ I’ll attend to that, too, boss,” said the old fel- 
low; and ten minutes later Pete Gambo trotted off 
in the direction of the San Pafael salt-mines. 

“We won’t see him again, will we, papa?” 
whispered Joe. 

“Perhaps not, but I’ll take care of him,” said Mr. 
Ilolgar; “it would never do to take him along on 
a trip like ours ; he’s a worse gossip than Mrs. Gas- 
par, and couldn’t keep our secret for one week.” 

“ Shall I fetch Chico down, now ?” asked Joe. 

“ Ho, indeed,” said his father ; “ it’s lucky enough 
that Pete did not see him, but we mustn’t tempt 
fate too often. Somebody might see him, and that 


THE CONVENT TREASURE. 


187 


would cost him his life if those demons should get 
on his track. Just take him a trayful of dinner, 
and I’ll be up there in half an hour.” 

Joe darted upstairs, and Mr. Holgar locked him- 
self up in his shop to arrange his papers and write 
a letter or two. When he got done he strolled over 
to the kitchen, but contented himself with munching 
a handful of dried fruit, and then went up to Joe’s 
bedroom. 

“Bad luck! There are three of those Martin 
boys in our backyard,” said Joe ; “ if they see me or 
Chico they will be bothering us all day. There! 
they’re already beginning to bawl.” 

“ITever mind them, they will get tired of that 
before long,” said Mr. Holgar ; “ they cannot see 
us, and we’ll take care that they cannot hear us, 
either. Come this way, boys — help me move that 
bed.” 

He carried Joe’s trundle-bed to the opposite end 
of the room, where even an outsider peeping in 
through the window might have failed to see it, 
and then sat down in the corner, nearly completely 
screened by a dozen coats and blankets hanging 
from the wall. “How get those two boxes, Joe,” 
said he, with a low chuckle ; “ they will make nice 
seats for Chico and you.” 

They had a long whispered consultation; and 
when Mr. Holgar finally rose, Joe snatched up one 
of the empty boxes and carried it to an old garret 
directly above the row of cells at the south end of 
the building. “The Martin boys are gone,” said 


188 


THE CONVENT TREASURE. 


he, after a cautious peep from the window. “I 
had better get that little step ladder in the garden ; 
those rafters are a bit too high for me. No, no, 
stay where you are, Chico ; you can help me when 
I get back.’’ 

He carried up the stepladder alone, and the two 
boys then lifted the empty box to a place where it 
could stand on two parallel rafters near the roof of 
the old garret, and began to fill it with all the odds 
and ends of hardware they could pick up in the 
lumber-lofts of the big building, and when they could 
find no more Joe took a bag and brought up about 
a peck of stones as big his fist. That nearly filled 
the box, and they put in a few old bottles for good 
measure. 

“ The fright will kill the rats in their holes if that 
comes tumbling down all of a sudden,” laughed 
Chico. 

“Yes, and in the middle of the night, too,” 
chuckled Joe ; “ they will think the house is coming 
down. But better let us set it a little more slantins*, 
or we might not be able to push it over at all.” 

They took supper in Joe’s room, and about two 
hours after sunset Mr. Holgar went down to the 
cell court, to await the invited guests. 

An hour passed, and the silvering edges of the 
clouds heralded the rising of the moon; but the 
plaza lay deserted, and the candle in the old shoe- 
maker’s shop across the road had ceased to flicker. 
It must be near ten o’clock; could the old witch 
have changed her mind ? 


THE CONVENT TREASURE. 


189 


Mr. Holgar was getting uneasy, and had half 
made up his mind to take a stroll toward the parrot 
bridge, when a shadow came gliding across the 
plaza, almost directly toward the point of the 
veranda where Holgar was sitting in the shadow of 
a pillar, then turning to the left seemed about to 
enter the lane toward the back yard. 

“Tasco!” whispered the shopkeeper, and the 
shadow turned and stopped. 

‘‘ Is that you, Mr. Holgar 

“Yes; where did you leave your grandmother?” 

“ She’s coming, seflor,” whispered Tasco ; “ I just 
went ahead to make sure that everything is all right 
here. She’s waiting under that tree over yonder ; 
shall I call her ?” 

“ Yes. You’re behind time ; tell her to hurry.” 

Tasco made no reply, but slipped back as noise- 
lessly as he had come, and presently returned, 
leading the hobbling old witch. 

“Ho wonder they are late,” thought the shop- 
keeper; “it must have taken them two hours to 
walk those two miles.” 

“ Have you got everything ready, sefior ?” asked 
the old hag. 

“Everything ready and safe,” whispered the 
shopkeeper. “ I sent my darkey to San Kafael to 
get him out of the way.” 

“ Yes — my boy met him on the ridge road,” 
croaked the hag ; “ let’s get a few stout bags now, 
Mr. Holgar.” 

They’re ready with the rest of the things. Step 


190 


THE CONVENT TREASURE. 


this way now ; can you see enough to find your 
way 

The hag made no reply, but kept groping along 
the walls, and presently crouched down to feel the 
sill of one of the cell rooms. 

“ Have you got a light, Mr. Holgar 

“Yes; but better let’s wait till we get indoors.” 

“ Hand me a match, then — thank you,” and in the 
dim flicker of a Caracas sulphur match the old 
witch could be seen bending over and searching the 
edge of the sill with trembling fingers. 

“ Yes, we are right,” she whispered. “ Look here : 
d’ye see those three notches? They’ve waited here 
a long while for somebody to guess what they 
mean.” In the next second she crushed out the 
match and dragged herself into the empty room — 
one of the old stone-cells in the basement of the 
monastery. “How close that door,” said the witch. 

Mr. Holgar struck another match and lit a tallow 
candle, but presently blew it out again. “Just stay 
where you are,” said he, “ and I’ll have all our tools 
and things in here in a minute.” 

But that minute seemed to have been mismeasured. 

“ He’s looking around to see if we didn’t bring 
any one along,” the old hag whispered to her grand- 
son. “ It would be a good chance if his nigger is 
really gone ; but never mind — wait till we catch 
him in the Cardenas swamps.” 

When the shopkeeper did return he carried a 
bundle of mining-toois, a basket and a chair. “ How 
we’re ready,” said he, closing the door again and 
re-lighting the candle. 


TEE CONVENT TREASURE. 


191 


“ Now hold that candle of yours a little higher,” 
said the hag ; “ or let me have it a minute.” 

“ Never mind ; I’ll hold it for you,” said the 
shopkeeper. 

“Come over here, then” — and hobbling across 
to the next corner, she put one of her heels close to 
the wall, then the heel of her other foot as close to 
the toes of the first, and thus advancing measured 
off ten feet. 

“Now, come this way,” she said, and repeated 
her maneuver in the next corner. Then, striding 
toward the center of the room, she dropped her 
shawl on a loose flagstone pretty near opposite the 
ten-foot mark of the first wall. “Here you are,” 
said she ; “ you have to do the rest, now. Pitch in, 
Tasco.” 

Tasco turned to pick up a crowbar, but in that 
minute the candle went out. 

“Blame that old tallow-stick,” said the shop- 
keeper; “I’ve got a lantern that smokes enough to 
choke you, but we’ll have to light it, after all. 
Here, take my arm, Mrs. Caspar — excuse me, I 
came near running you down in the dark ; better 
take a seat on this chair till we are done. Oh, 
here’s my basket and matches.” 

He lit his lantern, and Mrs. Caspar noticed that 
he had brought a liberal lunch along, and spread a 
blanket-shawl over the chair for her ; but she failed 
to notice that he had moved her own shawl nearly 
four feet. 

“ Let me have that crowbar,” said Mr. Holgar, 


192 


THE CONVENT TBEASURE. 


and in the next moment had dislodged one of the 
loose flagstones, and, seizing a mattock, began to 
work away like a picket-post in the trenches. 
“ Yes, you are right,’’ said he ; “ the ground is quite 
loose here, as if somebody had been digging before 
and stamped the dirt down again.” 

“Oh, I knew I was right,” chuckled the old 
witch ; “ Tasco might as well be getting the bags 
ready.” 

“ I declare — here’s an old silver half-dollar piece,” 
said the shopkeeper, bending down as if to pick up 
some object at his feet ; “ they didn’t sow money 
here to raise a crop of dollars, did they ?” 

“]^o — one of the workmen must have dropped 
that, digging,” said the witch; “the gold and 
things are all in pots. Say, Tasco, hadn’t you bet- 
ter help that gentleman, you lazy scamp,” she added, 
when she saw the shopkeeper take out a handker- 
chief to dry his forehead. 

“ Oh, that’s all right ; I’ll give him a chance as 
soon as I get tired,” laughed Mr. Holgar. “ How 
deep, do you think, shall we have to go ?” 

The witch hobbled up to inspect the pit. “ Oh, 
about three feet deeper,” said she; “but after you 
strike the first kettle you’ll have easy work with 
the rest ; they are just standing one on top of the 
other. ’ 

Again the shopkeeper worked away like a sentry 
under a hostile fusillade, till all the loose sandy loam 
of the surface stratum had been dug out, and every 
inch deeper down had to be cut through a layer of 
stiff blue clay. 


IBE CONVENT TREASURE. 


193 


Come on, and try your luck, now, Tasco,’’ said 
he, at last ; and, clambering out of the pit, he pro- 
ceeded to make himself comfortable on a bundle of 
bags, spread over one of the tilted flagstones, while 
Tasco rammed his spade down again and again 
before he could loosen a clod of the tenacious 
potter’s clay. 

“Couldn’t your Spanish friends take all that 
along ?” asked the shopkeeper. 

“ They didn’t expect they would have to leave at 
all, when they buried that, sir,” said the witch; 
“ all they were afraid of was their idea the rebels 
would break in and plunder the place ; so they tried 
to get their gold safe. But when they did break in 
every one had to run for their lives, and they ran 
them clear out of the country while they were 
about it. They say some of them came back the 
next year with Spanish soldiers, but they were all 
caught and shot.” 

“How are ye getting on, Tasco?” asked Mr. 
Holgar. 

“ I should say they did stamp the ground down 
pretty solid,” said the young Indian ; “ this is like 
digging through pitch, or something worse.” 

“ Hever mind. I’ll finish it as soon as I get a bit 
rested,” laughed the shopkeeper ; “you aren’t accus- 
tomed to that kind of work, Tasco; and, besides, 
this may be a time of the night when you are used 
to be sleeping.” 

“ I’ll wake him up with my stick in a minute,” 
snarled the old hag ; “if I wasn’t more than half 
lame I’d grab him and ” 


194 


THE CONVENT TREASURE 


“Hush, listen!” said Mr. Holgar; “what could 
that be ?” 

“ It sounded like a bump and a groan,” said the 
old hag, who had stopped short in the middle of her 
objurgation. 

“ It seemed to be underground,” said Mr. Holgar ; 
“ maybe there’s a spirit watching that treasure.” 

Tasco clambered out of the pit and cast a shy 
glance at the door. 

“ Get back there, now,” yelled the witch. 

“Here; let me see that spade,” said the shop- 
keeper. “We must be near six feet deep by this 
time, and we might as well finish it. Sit down, 
Tasco, or take a dram to straighten out your 
nerves.” 

“Hallo ! here went that bump again,” said the 
shopkeeper, after a two minutes’ struggle with the 
pit clay. “ I could feel it quite plain this time ; it 
was underground, like something sinking under my 
feet. Maybe the duendes are moving those pots — 
pulling them down lower the further we dig.” 

“It isn’t midnight, is it?” asked the old hag; and 
like an answer to her question hollow groans seemed 
to rise from the cellar and echo back from the lofts 
of the old monastery. 

“ Midnight ! mercy forbid 1” whispered the shop- 
keeper. “1^0, no; it can’t be more than eleven 
o’clock. There must be a master spook haunting 
this miserable old rookery, after all ; but never 
mind— I’ll ride over to San Martin to-morrow and 
fetch a peck of consecrated incense. It can’t have 
been rats, or ” 


THE CONVENT TREASURE. 


195 


“Heavens alive, what’s all that!” he roared 
“the house is coming down. Quick! Let’s get 
out of this !” 

A rattle like the collapse of a stone-built steeple 
shook the old building, and in the rush for the door 
Tasco knocked down the old witch, and in the next 
moment received a box on the ear that made him 
stagger. “ Here, pick up this lady, you miserable 
coward,” bellowed the shopkeeper. “ Pick her up 
this minute, or you won’t leave this place alive. If 
it hadn’t been for your laziness we’d had those pots 
out half an hour ago, but you were the last to work 
and the first to run. I^ever mind, Mrs. Gaspar,” 
he added, “ we’ll finish this to-morrow night without 
fail, and ” 

“ Let’s get out, sir,” gasped the witch, when the 
shopkeeper at last succeeded in turning the key of 
the rusty old lock. 

“ Yayas o te maio — hurry out or I kill you !” came 
a groaning voice from the interior of the building, 
and Mr. Holgar was hardly able to keep step with 
the young Indian, who had picked up the witch 
like a bundle of old rags, and with the superhuman 
strength of a panic-fit was rushing across the plaza 
and down the bridge road. 

“ I’ll be at your place to-morrow as soon as I’ve 
got that incense,” were Holgar’s parting words as 
he turned to retrace his steps to the convent. 

He then clambered up in the loft and struck a 
match. 

“ How’s times up here ?” he inquired, when he 


196 


THE CONVENT TREASURE. 


reached the garret where the two boys were rolling 
on the ground, almost choked with laughter. 

“ Oh, papa, papa ! this will pay me, and if we 
never find one penny,” cried Joe; “I came near 
splitting with laughing, and Chico laughed so much 
one time, I thought he had burst, and we would 
have to sew him up again.” 

“I couldn’t help it,” tittered Chico. “We could 
see the whole ghost show through a crack in the 
floor.” 


THE CONVENT TREASURE. 


197 


CHAPTEK lY. 

“Didn’t we work that avalanche pretty?” said 
Joe. 

“ Yes, and mighty lucky we didn’t ^'verdo it and 
break down the ceiling,” laughed Mr Holgar. “ It 
sounded like a thousand of coal coming down on a 
dancing-floor. Well, they are gone. Say, Chico, 
you know that old witch better than I. Do you 
think there’s any risk of her coming back to- 
night?” 

“ You couldn’t get her back for all the gold in 
America,” said Chico. “ I know what she’s going 
to do. She will crawl under her blankets and 
whine all night, like she did when she thought 
she had seen a ghost on Panther Creek. She saw 
something like a boy standing in the middle of a 
sand road, and when she came near it was gone ; but 
this must have scared her a hundred times worse. 
If she only gets alive under her blankets she won’t 
mind missing those pots the first try.” 

“ Well, let’s go then and see how much they did 
miss,” said the shopkeeper. 

“ To begin with, they missed the right place by 
four feet,” said he, when he had relit both the 
candle and the lantern. 


198 


TEE CONVENT TREASURE. 


“ How the wonder do you know asked Joe. 

“ Oh, the ghosts whispered that in my ear when 
the candle went out,” laughed Mr. Holgar. “ Here, 
Joe ; help me move this stone — that’s it. Put under 
the crowbar now, Chico ; good — over she goes !” 

“ Yes, this is more like it,” said he when he struck 
his spade in the loose ground. ‘‘Second work of 
that sort can always be told, no matter if the fill-up 
had a hundred years’ time to settle.” 

“ Please, papa, you know what you promised me,” 
begged Joe. 

“xlll right; get your spade,” said Mr. Holgar. 
“ I’m going to finish my rest ; that first hole came 
near blistering the skin off my hands before I got 
six feet down.” 

“ Can’t I do any helping ?” asked Master Chico. 

“ Let’s see — why, certainly ; take my spade, and 
fill that fool-pit up again, and stamp it down all you 
can. We don’t want them to see ghosts again, the 
next fellows that look in here.” 

“ Look here ! What’s this? A chip of wood !” said 
Joe, picking up a sliver of pine wood under his 
spade ; “ that shows there has been digging going 
on here ; maybe somebody used that to scrape his 
mattock, half a hundred years ago.” 

“Let me see that — yes, that’s a piece of pitch 
pine,” said Mr. Holgar; “they didn’t get that in 
this neighborhood, no matter where they brought 
it from. But hold on there, Joe; you will wear 
yourself out if you keep smashing away like all 
that.” 


THE CONVENT TREASXlItE. 


199 


“Not a bit,” laughed Joe, dropping the mattock 
and seizing his spade again ; “ I warned 3^ou I could 
work like twenty where there’s such wages going.” 

“Here, that pit is full,” said Chico; “shall I put 
that stone back again now ?” 

“Wait, I help you,” said Mr. Holgar, and began 
to drag up the stone, when Joe suddenly gave a 
whoop, and leaping out of his pit caught his father 
by the arm and almost pulled him off his feet. 
“ Drop that !” he cried. “ Drop that old stone, pa! 
Drop everything, and come over here, and push that 
spade down! Hurrah! Your ghosts were right! 
We made it!” 

Mr. Holgar at once dropped the stone, and almost 
with one spring reached the edge of the new pit and 
thrust down Joe’s garden-spade. 

“By heavens! Joe, you are right,” he said; 
“ that’s the top of an iron kettle.” 

“We made it, papa! Chico, we made it! Hur- 
rah for Mexico !” cried Joe, dancing around the old 
cell like a fandango guest, and forcing his playmate 
to join in a wind-up waltz-whirl. 

“Jump in here, quick — who’s the lightest of you 
two — you, Chico — jump in here and get hold of 
that lid ; get your grip under the edge if there’s no 
ring — that’s it, now pull ! Keep it up — wait a mo- 
ment, let me break that clod ; now try again — pull ! 
Well done, up she comes. Yes, check your baggage 
for Mexico, boys ; that’s gold quartz and nuggets 
mixed, and a thundering big kettle full. Let’s get 
a bag, pets.” 


200 


THE CONVENT TREASURE. 


Mr. Holgar turned, but hadn’t moved a step yet, 
when Chico caught up his hand and covered it with 
violent kisses. It was, perhaps, the first time in the 
poor little fellow’s life that a promise of brighter 
times broke, like a gleam of sunshine, through his 
clouds of misery and trouble. 

“ Good lad ! go and hug Joe, now,” said Mr. Hol- 
gar, greatly touched ; “ you two will be brothers 
after this, and I must stop grizzling about the little 
boy I lost three years ago.” 

“ But, papa, we can never move all that,” said 
Joe, after a peep at the bottom of the pit ; ‘‘ look at 
the size of that kettle ; that holds more than our 
two mules could carry.” 

“ Too rich to move, eh ?” laughed the shopkeeper ; 
“ but don’t you see, Joe, that isn’t all gold, nor the 
tenth part of it ; we’ll just pick out the loose nug- 
gets and leave the rest for the next comer.” 

“Oh, I thought they were diamonds,” faltered 
Joe. 

“ That’s a good joke,” laughed his father ; “ dia- 
monds as big as your double fist, and packed away 
like cobble stones. Ho, Joe, the old monks were 
not as rich as all that. That quartz may not be 
worth more than five dollars a pound, but we 
mustn’t growl ; just look at all those little pieces of 
pure gold. Hand it up, now, gold or gravel, till we 
get the kettle empty — light enough to lift it.” 

Chico handed up the medley, a hatful at a time, 
and Joe sorted it in little piles at the edge of the 
pit. 


THE CONVENT TBEASIUIE. 


201 


“ Now, let me get hold of that kettle,” said the 
shopkeeper at last; “here, take that crowbar, Joe, 
and stir it a bit ; try again, that will do — here we 
are,” swinging the big iron pot up on the flagstones. 
“ Why, that’s a pitch-pot,” he said ; “ one of those 
fire-kettles they used to smelt pitch-cement for their 
stone walls.” 

There were a few more quartz pieces in the pot, 
and at the bottom a sediment of gold dust that 
filled a good-sized haversack. Of the larger nug- 
gets there was about a peck and a half. 

“ There’s another pot under there,” said Joe ; “ but 
it isn’t half as big as this.” 

“Let’s get it out — please let me try again,” said 
Chico; but after pulling and twisting for ten 
minutes, the little fellow had to give it up. “ This 
lid seems to be soldered down, or something,” 
he said ; “ it won’t budge ; but there is an iron ring 
on it, maybe we can pry it out.” 

An attempt of that sort, however, resulted in 
splintering Joe’s hoe-handle. 

“ I wish we had a rope,” said Mr. Holgar ; “ isn’t 
there a piece left in the store ?” 

“No, I used it for haltering the mules,” said Joe ; 
“ but wait — I can get it back now, and just lock up 
Yenada in the stable; she won’t go far if she does 
break out.” 

“All right, hurry up,” said the shopkeeper; 
“ here, Chico, help me get these nuggets in those 
old mail-bags ; leather is the only thing that will 
hold a weight like that.” 


202 


THE CONVENT TREASURE. 


With the aid of a stout rope and crowbar the 
second pot was lifted out of its rooting-place, and 
revealed a third and still smaller kettle, likewise 
with a ring to its lid. 

“ Out with that, too, while we’re at it,” said Mr. 
Holgar ; but the last pot came up so easy that its 
lack of weight betrayed itself before it reached the 
edge of the pit. “ What’s this, I wonder?” said Mr. 
Holgar, while he contrived to give the screw-top a 
twist in the right direction. “ Halloo ! papers and 
parchments, and — hold on, you’re right this time, 
Joe, they did put in something like jewelry knick 
knacks; look at these rings and necklaces. Let’s 
put all that in one bag, papers and all. There 
might be some funny stories in that old convent 
chronicle, if it isn’t all title deeds.” 

“ Oh, but this pot is heavy,” said Joe, who had 
been trying to open kettle No. 2. 

“ Don’t bend that lid out of shape, or we will never 
get it open,” said his father. ‘‘ Let me try — say, 
fetch over a bit of that American butter in the 
lunch basket, and bring a match along ; a little 
grease is sometimes better than a sledge-hammer — 
that’s it. How let it trickle down under this lid — 
wait now, didn’t I tell you? It’s moving ; just look 
here — wasn’t that worth a little trouble ? That’s a 
kettle full of picked nuggets, our best find so far. 
That accounts for all that weight.” 

“Wonder how many pounds are in there,” said 
Josy. 

“ More than a hundred, anyhow,” said the store- 


THE CONVENT TREASURE. 


203 


keeper. “ I know I have lifted a hundred-pound 
keg of nails easier than this. I hope there’s no 
quartz at the bottom, either.” 

“Oh, mercy, there’s somebody coming!” whis- 
pered Joe. “ There’s always something happening 
to spoil the best luck. Listen I Do you hear those 
steps on the porch ? What miserable fool can be 
wanting to bother us at this time of the night 

“ Keep still, Joe,” whispered Mr. Holgar, reach- 
ing for his revolver, “Kow listen!” But in the 
next moment a broad smile swept over his face. 
“Nothing but a common ghost, Joe,” he laughed. 
“ Long ears instead of horns — can’t you guess yet?” 

“ Oh, good luck !” said Joe. “ You’re right ; it’s 
old Yenada” — peeping out of the door. “ Yes, there 
she is ; the old tramp did push that stable door 
open, and tried to take a sneak in moonlight. Wait 
— hand me that rope ; I’ll fix her.” 

“ I could tell it the first step, it was a mule or a 
horse,” laughed Chico. “ Joe was rattling that 
kettle; that’s the reason it fooled him.” 

“ Let’s try and upset that pot,” said Mr. Holgar. 
“ Well done. Just look at that pile of gold ! They 
must have known better mines than we ever 
found.” 

“ Take a look at this, Joe,” said he, when his little 
mule-catcher returned from the stable. “ How long 
do you suppose would it take a miner with ordinary 
luck to collect such a pile ?” 

“ About five years ?” 

Fifty years would be nearer the truth,” said his 


204 


THE CONVENT IREASURE. 


father. “ They had an army of peons at work in 
the Sierra, those old Spanish monks.’’ 

‘‘ Do you really think that is more than a hun- 
dred pounds ?” asked Joe. 

‘‘ At least a hundred and twenty, and each pound 
is worth five hundred Spanish dollars,” said the 
shopkeeper. 

No wonder the old monks tried to come back 
and fetch that,” cried Joe. “I heard what the 
witch said when you asked her why they didn’t 
take it along.” 

“ Poke your spade in there once more, Joe,” said 
Mr. Holgar. I suppose we reached the bottom of 
that pile at last ?” 

“Yes, look here, pa,” said Joe, pulling out his 
spade after a hard push ; “ the ground is as solid as 
stone under that last kettle. There’s no use digging 
any deeper.” 

“ Let’s pack up, then,” said Mr. Holgar ; “ I’ve 
everything ready except the nuggets. Here, let’s 
put them in these old leather mail bags first, and 
then salt sacks on the outside, and put in a few 
pieces of quartz with each peckful.” 

“ Why — by way of keepsake ?” 

“ No ; but it will pass for a load of ore then, if 
one of the mules should break out and get collared 
by a stranger without spectacles. Hand me that 
coil of twine, Chico ; that’s it. And — oh, I remem- 
ber ’’—reaching for his inside pocket. “ Look here, 
Joe ; will you skip over on tiptoe and put this in 
the letter-box of Don Manuel^ tho old notary on the 


THE CONVENT TREASURE. 


205 


lower plaza, you know ? You can’t miss it in the 
moonlight.” 

“All right; let me have that,” said Joe, and 
darted off at cat speed. “ It’s in,” said he, when he 
returned five minutes after. “ You didn’t write 
him about those cutthroats, did you ?” 

“ Oh, no ; just asked him to take care of our 
place here for a little while and put in twenty dol- 
lars in bank-notes for his trouble. I wrote him we 
are going to the Sierra on business, and that’s true 
enough, if he had ever seen southern Mexico.’^ 

“ And did you remember Pete’s present ?” 

“ Yes, I’ve that ready, too ; just put this in his 
trunk, will you,” producing a larger package ; “ you’ll 
find the key above the corner window in the 
kitchen.” 

“ There isn’t a cloud in the sky,” said Joe ; “ we’ll 
have moonlight till morning.” 

“ Yes ; luck comes in bunches if it does come,” 
chuckled Mr. Holgar. “ Let’s saddle up then and 
start out.” 

“ Don’t you wish now we had kept Cabezote ?” 
asked Joe. 

“ On account of the load ? No, we’re all right,” 
said the shopkeeper. “I’m going to walk on all 
uphill trails, and the mules wouldn’t be worth their 
fodder if they couldn’t carry three hundred pounds 
each on level roads. Our provisions and blankets 
won’t weigh more than fifty pounds, and I didn’t 
take more than two gripsacks of baggage along. 
What do you weigh, Chico ?” 


206 


2HE CONVENT TREASURE. 


“ About forty-five pounds,” said the little fellow. 

“ I thought so ; there’s no risk of an over weight, 
then; Yenada has been loafing for two weeks, 
anyhow, and ought to make up for lost time.” 

“To La Guayra, papa?” whispered Joe, when 
the mules stood ready packed in the shadow of the 
north side porch. 

“ Yes, pet ; but we’ll start the Other way first, and 
then round through the wilderness of tracks in the 
middle of the plaza.” 

“ Good ; we’ll see the old gristmill once more, 
anyhow,” said Joe, as Chico clambered up on 
the perch of saddlebags. 

Only one dog started barking as the midnight 
travelers passed the last row of houses, but his 
owner was a miserly old widow who hardly ever 
left her house, and did not bother herself about the 
concerns of the outside world. 

Half an hour after the emigrants reached the 
overland road, which here crossed a grassy plateau, 
Avith clumps of live-oak trees where the oriyas, a 
kind of whippoorwills, were calling to each other, 
and large tropical night butterfiies hovered with a 
buzzing sound over the clusters of estrella-thorn 
blossoms. Everything else was still, and only 
at long intervals the wail of a specter-monkey 
came from the depth of the Sierra forest, or the 
gobbling of a wild bush- turkey that had mistaken 
the bright moonlight for the dawn of the morning. 

“ What a beautiful night,” said Mr. Holgar, “ we 
could not have had better weather if we had waited 
for a year.” 


TEE CONVENT TREASURE. 


207 


“ Papa,” said Joe, “ doesn’t that money belong to 
us, anyhow, if we dug it up under our own house?” 

“ The matter is this,” said Mr. Holgar; “ in any 
other country of the world a man who buys a house 
or a piece of land owns everything down to the cen- 
ter of the earth, where his next neighbor in China 
would have a right to stop him from digging any 
further, and it was just the same way in Venezuela 
till the last revolution broke out and the government 
got badly in debt. They set up sorts of crazy claims 
now, but that will change in a year or two, and no 
one will trouble us even now if we don’t advertise 
our good luck in the principal government news- 
papers.” 

“ It belongs to us now and we are going to keep 
it,” said Joe defiantly. 

‘‘ Half of it would have belonged to Chico’s grand- 
mother,” said Mr. Holgar, “ if she had treated us 
right, but she forfeited that claim wdien she tried to 
poison me, and her share will go to Chico now.” 

“ Look over yonder to the right, isn’t that day- 
light coming ?” asked Chico three hours after, when 
the travelers had reached the crest of a stony ridge. 

“ Yes, that’s morning light,” said Mr. Holgar, 
“ but we can keep on a few miles further; there are 
no houses close to the road and we not apt to meet 
any muleteers before seven o’clock.” 

The sun was about an hour high when Mr. Holgar 
dismounted and led his mule up the glen of a little 
brook that came dancing and singing from the foot- 
hills of the Sierra Madre, Joe, too, hopped ofl: his 


208 


THE CONVENT TREASURE. 


perch, and they picked their way between bowlders 
and fallen trees till they halted in the shade of a 
caucho grove, at least five hundred yards from the 
wagon road. 

“ That will do,” said Mr. Holgar, “ just tether the 
mules and let’s have a bit of breakfast and a nap ; 
it’s a thousand to one that nobody will bother us 
here. All I hope now is that bright sun will not 
brew up a thunder shower.” 

But the weather saints favored the travelers, and 
on the third morning after their departure from 
Marquesas they reached a chain of coast hills that 
revealed a glimpse of La Guayra, and the glittering 
sky line of the Atlantic Ocean. 

“ 1^0 camping this morning, boys,” said Mr. Hol- 
gar ; “ I’ll just give you an hour’s rest in that last 
strip of timber down yonder, while I gallop ahead 
and have a chat with an innkeeper that used to 
board me many years ago. If he’s alive yet we’ll 
have a good chance to ride straight into a cool yard 
and find a good guest room ready instead of having 
to wander about the streets and hunt quarters with 
a gang of loafers at our heels,” 

Look, Chico, he’s got a bundle of something 
good,” said Joe, when he saw his father return at a 
brisk canter, and waving his bandana in token of 
good news. 

“ What luck, papa ?” asked Joe when Mr. Holger 
pulled up Yenada in the shade of the first tree. 

“ He’s alive,” said Holgar cheerily, ‘‘ alive and at 
the old place; they’re straightening out the best room 


THE CONVENT TREASURE. 


209 


in the house for us. But there’s something better 
than that. This is Wednesday, and the Yera Cruz 
steamer is starting at eight o’clock to-morrow morn- 
ing ; that will just leave us time to get the Pampa 
burrs out of our hair. But the best of all is in this 
bundle, and it’s all for little Chico.” 

“ Oh, Chee ! Boy, look at this,” cried Joe, tearing 
open the package, “ a nice straw hat and knee 
breeches and shoes and a blue velvet jacket !” 

“ Oh, Mr. Holgar, Mr. Holgar, that’s too much!” 
cried the little fellow. “ I ought to pay for that, and 
I have got no money hardly !” 

“ No, only about eighty thousand dollars,” laughed 
Holgar, “ and besides what I owe you for Joe’s life 
and my own ; we’ll have to buy you a good many 
blue jackets before we can settle for all that.” 

“ Just wait till we get a looking-glass,” said Joe, 
when his playmate began to strut around in the 
glory of his new suit ; “ why, they must be blind if 
they can’t see you’re a white boy now.” 

“ Oh, what fun, what fun !” cried Chico when he 
strolled through the crowded streets of the harbor 
town, hand in hand with his friend and protector. 
He had never seen a big city before, but his joy be- 
came obstreperous when Mr. Holgar took him to 
the east side beach and turned him loose on a drift 
hill of starfish and sea shells. 

There were numerous nugget brokers in the city 
that saved miners the trouble of shipping their gold 
to the government mint at Caracas, and before 
evening the Holgars contrived to lighten their load 


210 


THE CONVENT TREASURE. 


of minerals about one-half, without taking more 
than one satchelful to any one place. 

The farewell morning was one of the brightest of 
that season, and the captain of the Medusa recog- 
nized Mr. Holgar as an old acquaintance who liad 
dined with him at the same club house many years 
ago. The auspices of a pleasant voyage could, in- 
deed, not have been happier, though at nine o’clock 
the southwest breeze became a little boisterous in its 
mirth, whirling up dust clouds all along the range 
of barren coast hills, and several waterspouts at the 
edge of the reefs where the land Wind encountered 
the air currents of the ocean. 

“We call them water-witches,” remarked the 
captain, pointing to a bevy of the waltzing tromhas; 
“ look over yonder, little Blue Jacket,” said he, 
slapping Chico’s shoulder, “ how would you like to 
have a dance with a girl of that sort ?” 

“ IN'o, thank you, sir,” laughed Chico, “ the witches 
will have to get along without me after this.” 


THE END. 


ADVENTURES IN CUBA; 

OR, 

How an American Boy Saved His Friend 
and Escaped from a Spanish Prison. 

By F. L. OSWALD. 


1 2mo. Cloth. Illuminated Cover. Illustrated $1.00. 


Tom Lander, the hero of the tale, is a young American who has made Cuba 
his second home, and who, in the absence of his father, receives a message that 
a family of former neighbors has been obliged to seek safety in flight, and that 
their favorite son, Tom’s best friend, has been captured by the Spaniards and 
dragged to the military prison of Fort Bayamo. 

Young Lander, though almost stunned with horror, at once consults with 
members of the Cuban Junta and starts for Bayamo the next day. A letter of 
his father’s clerk introduces him to Don Elias Macdn, a longheaded old Creole of 
Yankee descent, who espouses the cause of his young countryman and joins him 
in a close survey of the problem. 

Then begins a thrilling struggle of energy and brains against apparently hope* 
less difficulties. The young captive, on the verge of a desperate venture, receives 
a timely warning and is enabled to effect his escape a few days before the arrival 
of a military inquisitor who would have murdered him to extort the, secrets of 
the Junta. 

His deliverers meet him at the preconcerted rendezvous, and in the company 
of the young American and a Cuban orphan boy he continues his flight to the 
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to his friends. 

The story abounds with striking descriptions of Cuban scenery, the wonders of 
the tropical virgin woods, climatic portents, the strange customs and superstitions 
of the rural population, the co-operative enthusiasm of the patriots and the power 
of their secret league, the mysteries of city life, refugee camps and Spanish 


prisons. 


The author. Dr. Felix L. Oswald, is thoroughly familiar with the marvels of 
nature and the almost equally peculiar social life of the Spanish West Indies, 
where he passed the six years from 1869-75, and the holiday vacations of several 


recent winters. 

“Dr. Oswald,” says the founder of the Popular Science Monthly^ “is the 
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from the American press in many a day. He has journeyed extensively in 
Europe, South America and the United States, and always as an open-eyed 
observer of nature and men.” 

Imaddition to numerous scientific works. Dr. Oswald has published the follow- 
ing contributions to the entertaining literature of the English language : 

“Summerland Sketches; or, RamWes in the Backwoods of Mexico and Central 
Atnerica;” “ Days and Nights in tnl Tropics ; ” “Zoological Sketches;” “In 
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by the publishers. 


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105 Chambers Street. N- Y. 



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